Nothing in Diller Scofidio + Renfro’s overhaul of the Lincoln Center campus has stirred more debate or more raw emotion than its redesign of the iconic fountain that stands at the center of the Josie Robertson Plaza (see image after the jump). Framed by Philip Johnson’s David H. Koch Theater, Max Abramowitz’s Avery Fisher Hall, and Wallace K. Harrison’s Metropolitan Opera, it has been a meeting point for cultured New Yorkers for nearly half a century and has figured prominently in movies like “The Producers,” “Moonlighting” and “Ghostbusters.” New Yorkers can find some solace then, in the knowledge that however the rest of the campus turns out, the fountain has been altered for the better. Though the entirety of the Josie Robertson Plaza, which Philip Johnson designed in imitation of the Piazza del Campidoglio in Rome, is a triumph of urban planning, the central fountain, which he also designed, was always a bit clumsy. Johnson was so impressed with himself for using the classicizing material of granite that it never occurred to him to use it with subtlety. Instead, he conceived the fountain as a thick slab clumsily supported by a stolid drum. [more]