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Mini golf on Park Avenue? Architects say it's possible

Greens on Greens

Mini golf on Park Avenue? Architects say it's possible

Mini golf on Park Avenue? Architects say it's possible. (Michelle Schrank/Image via NYT)

Mini golf is not an activity usually associated with New York’s Park Avenue. But at the behest of a real estate company, that’s what a pair of architects have proposed for the grassy medians that divide the avenue, one of Manhattan’s most prestigious streets.

Fisher Brothers, a real estate firm with deep ties to Midtown East, recently sponsored a competition to rethink the Park Avenue medians in the neighborhood. More than 150 urban planners, landscape architects, and architects submitted proposals that ranged from reasonably do-able to fantastically ambitious: In addition to mini-golf idea, other winning plans included a mid-avenue aquarium, pictured below, and an elevated park, kind of like a High Line crossed with SANAA’s Grace Farms.

Eric Spencer proposed a giant aquarium for the medians. (Eric Spencer/Image via NYT)

For their part, Michelle Schrank and Dijana Milojevic, the architects behind the putt-putt idea, would like to see a mini-golf course installed from from 46th to 57th streets.

Fisher Brothers will fête its winner with a $25,000 prize, but the people will get to vote on all 17 entries in a separate competition. The victor there will score a $5,000 prize, the New York Times reported.

While it’s not unheard of for real estate execs to sponsor design competitions, Fisher Brothers doesn’t actually own the medians—the city does.

“The point is not necessarily to create the practical idea that will get funded and built,” competition jury member Vishaan Chakrabarti, founding principal of Practice for Architecture and Urbanism, told the Times. “The point is to focus our attention on things that are right in front of us and the possibilities there are.”

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