As Mark Lamster has noted over at the News, the Police and Fire Pension System (hereinafter “Museum Tower”) has made public a design for an enormous Ferris wheel sculpture thingy with umbrellas that would open and close to shade the Nasher from Museum Tower’s glare. The 400-foot-tall structure, called Surya, was dreamed up by the architects at Front and REX, the latter being Joshua Prince-Ramus’ joint. There are a few reasons why this idea seems implausible, foremost among them the fact that Surya would be anchored by a tripod planted in Graham Greene’s parking lot, the one where he wants to build artists’ housing. Also, it could cost upwards of $30 million.
But here’s the thing I can’t get over: we’ve already seen Surya. The video you can view via this link was part of this News story, published in November 2012. Back then, Prince-Ramus and his people gave us some relaxing music with their impossible idea. Why the silence this time?
