Fake Flower Fan to Design Postmodern Park

California has four “great parks,” all surrounded by city. Griffith in L.A., Presidio and Golden Gate in San Francisco, and Balboa in San Diego. Now there’s going to be a fifth, sited in the city of Irvine, deep in suburban Orange County on 1,300 acres of the former El Toro Marine airbase. Landscape designer Ken Smith has been chosen as master designer after submitting a design that anchors the new park with an artificial canyon. (The remaining 3,700 acres of El Toro will be developed by the homebuilder Lennar Corporation.)

Some observers hoped the first major suburban park would serve as prospective laboratory for 21st century public space, the way Frederick Law Olmstead's Central Park did for the 20th. They worry that Smith’s canyon will amount to hiking trails and a predictable nature center. But Smith, who once implanted a roof garden at New York’s Museum of Modern Art with spinning plastic daisies, may not disappoint. He is an admirer of Olmstead's who sees the Manhattan masterpiece as a brilliant work of art."