There's high drama in Orange County. Today at 3pm, the Board of Directors for The Great Park (on the site of the former El Toro Airforce Base) will decide who the park designer will be. The long winding process to pick a park designer has whittled a list of 24 down to 3, and now the battle lines have been drawn among board members.
The Great Park board directors' latest leanings suggest split votes between Royston Hanamoto Alley & Abey of Mill Valley and Ken Smith of New York, while EMBT of Barcelona appears out of the running - at least for the master designer job. However, EMBT's widely admired creativity and building design prowess may earn it a secondary job on the park. At completion, the Great Park will be the second greatest park in Southern California, behind only Griffith Park in total acreage. Land + Living did an excellent run down of the three competing park designs with explicit park porn all over the place.
· Great Park plans today to choose a designer [OC Register]
· Orange County Great Park [Land + Living]