counter/point: The 2013 D-Crit Conference, moderated by NPR’s “The Takeaway” host John Hockenberry, and featuring graduating students of the SVAMFA in Design Criticism, will take place on Saturday, May 11, 2013 at the SVA Theatre in New York City.
Paola Antonelli, senior curator of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art, will deliver the keynote lecture, launching an afternoon of rich, polyphonic exchange between the D-Crit Class of 2013 and a headlining roster of design curators, practitioners, theorists, critics, educators, and planners. D-Crit students will be presenting their thesis research in counterpoint with: Walker Arts Center curator of Architecture and Design Andrew Blauvelt; British interaction design firm Dunne & Raby co-founder Fiona Raby; architect and theorist Mark Foster Gage; director of the J. Max Bond Center on Design for the Just City Toni Griffin; and architect and activist Michael Sorkin.
Topics to be addressed include: the persistence of segregation in today’s built environment; the problems inherent in exhibiting graphic design; the spectacular framing of nature in the urban environment; product design’s social and participatory dimension; and how some emerging architects are using literal representation in new ways.
This will be the fourth D-Crit conference organized by, and featuring, graduating D-Crit students. Join us for a fast-paced afternoon of heady ideas and practical insight about the subjects and strategies giving shape to design criticism today, and help us to celebrate a new generation of design critics, editors, journalists, authors, curators, researchers, and educators.
This event is free and open to the public, so sign up today to save your seat.
When a New York City broker recently sold a condo in the opulent One57 building for $6.5 million to a Chinese woman, he expected her to move in immediately. However, when he asked what she was looking for, she said it was not for her but for her daughter, who would be attending school in the city, either at Columbia or NYU. When he asked how old her daughter was, she replied: “Well, she’s 2.”
While this purchase may seem surprising and exorbitant, it merely reflects a change in purchasing trends for new luxury developments in New York City. The same broker, speaking with a Chinese News Agency, said that more than 25% of his business now comes from that country. Buildings like One57 are attracting rich investors from all over the world, from places like Russia, South Korea, and China, international businessmen who can easily shell out several million dollars for a brand new condo. An illuminating piece from Atlantic Cities explains why this is a negative trend for New York.
When these investors purchase living space in New York, or in comparable North American cities like Vancouver, they are doing so primarily for the value of the investment and only secondarily for habitation. This results in apartments and condos that lay vacant for a large portion of the year. While the few residents that do maintain consistent residency end up with relaxation and quiet, most complain that the experience of living in an empty building is lonely.
This trend is not new and, save for a brief respite during the recession, shows no signs of slowing down. When the New York Times published this article earlier this year, the real estate blog Curbed responded sarcastically because they found the article’s conclusion to be so incredibly obvious. Their headline: “Shocker: Rich People Buy NYC Homes And Don’t Live In Them.”
This is bad news for the activity on city streets. Although a neighborhood might be championed as incredibly dense statistically, if all of its towers are empty, it might not be quite as dense as previously championed. Falling density means decreased street activity, less support for local businesses and restaurants, and a shrinking sense of community. While this trend–a product of relentless capitalism and gentrification–cannot be stopped, hopefully these non-resident owners will soon come to realize the effect of their absence on their neighbors.
[This trend may include exclusive low rise neighborhoods in New York and other cities, like Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, where earlier lively streets provided a model of urbanism for Jane Jacobs, and London’s Belgravia (as noted in the NYT). The BBC has also been following the phenomenon of wealth and mobility in a series of reports called Wealth without Borders.]
For those interested in design and how it can affect the future, one does not have to go far in order to find a list of lectures, seminars, and gallery presentations of contemporary works. Often, the focus of these events circles around the exposition of new ideas. Rare are the chances for one to develop and voice one’s own opinion.
As a result, the workshop envisioned by Chris Woebken and Elliott Montgomery is such a refreshing concept. Having met during their studies in London, the two of them have focused their design endeavors on how to unravel problems instead of solving them. These designers are well aware of the importance of community engagement in the development of a vision for the future.
The first ‘Extrapolation Factory‘ was held at Studio X, 180 Varick Street, Manhattan, in February; students, architects, artists, and designers were invited to create an item for the future. But not just any futuristic item, the twist was that the envisioned space for these items was “something that you could find in a 99 cents store”.
After having spoken with both designers, I came to understand the logic behind creating such a restriction on the design process. In a world where everyone is focused on larger chances and new products that will solve seemingly insurmountable problems, both Chris and Elliott see the challenge on a different scale. For them, the focus should not be on creating the one innovation which will solve all problems, they understand that that is impossible, instead the solution lies in creating an environment in which important social changes can take place. As such, their workshop was less an intensive on how to solve the different challenges that will be faced in the future, but instead an environment to gather ideas on how society will change and how those changes will be reflected in even the most menial of objects.
Which is where the workshop falls in as a space for an exchange of ideas but also in order to study in which direction the public feels society will progress. A four step program, Chris and Elliott provided a series of forecasts envisioned by scientists, engineers, politicians, and intellectuals. These expectations ranged from an estimation of how many billions of people will populate the earth in fifty years to what will become the main source of energy. Then, having chosen a forecast which appeals to them, the participants then designed and constructed an item which fits into the imagined future inspired by these expectations. By creating a series of ‘reflections’ of society, Chris and Elliott have been able to compile a small database that demonstrates where the public believes the true problems of the future are situated.
Finally, Chris and Elliott’s ingenuity in bringing new ideas to the community did not stop there. After having packaged these new items, they were ‘exhibited’ in the local 99 cent store down the street from their studio. By placing these items in a real world setting, the public was immersed in this unorthodox scenario where they are not handed new ideas to contemplate, as one would in a gallery or lecture, but instead must actively search for them amongst the 50 cent cans of beans, bargain compilation of toothbrushes, and plethora of cheap hardware.
For more images and information about the Extrapolation Factory and its creators, visit the project site.
Claire Weisz is a founding partner of WXY Architecture + Urban Design, an award-winning, multi-disciplinary practice known for the innovative design of buildings, civic infrastructure, and public open space around New York City.
We first interviewed her weeks before Hurricane Sandy struck New York, but we begin with a follow-up conversation not long after the storm passed.
Your recent work for New York includes many projects that fell in the direct path of Hurricane Sandy: newly built Transmitter Park in Greenpoint, public buildings for the beach at Far Rockaway, public architecture in Battery Park that flooded at the tip of Manhattan, and on top of that, you’re now working on the East River Blueway, again at the water’s edge. Tell us about Sandy’s effect on your work.
The parks performed well, and they helped the waterfront absorb the impact from the storm surge. The parks have survived in great measure the salt water in the Battery and Greenpoint and the sand in Far Rockaway. This is taking into consideration that they came back within three weeks of the storm with the help of many volunteers and staff, who devoted hours to clean up those areas.
It is the electrical and mechanical infrastructure that didn’t survive the storm surge, and now the city and state are having to do a great deal to repair and re-install damaged equipment. Hard hit were the offices of many of our public and not-for-profit clients – the Battery whose office and archives were devastated, Jill Weber and her team in the Rockaways whose offices were severely damaged. Many agencies have staff who also have damaged homes.
Did the storm change the way you think about the city’s waterfront? Or might design for the waterfront, going forward?
Yes. It gave us a direct understanding of 100-year, and 500-year, flood lines. This was a reality check in time, space, and effect. Now I will never push to have utility infrastructure within reach of even a 500 year line. But like other catastrophic events it is important to not forget, but to absorb and make a part of all the design decisions one has going forward. Especially when making the hard decision of what to choose to do first.
As a designer of public space, if you were to boil down your reactions to the event, and came up with one take-away message for people to think about, what would it be? What would you like to see the city, and the country, do going forward? Are there adaptive methods or infrastructure would you like to see put into accelerated use?
Prioritize the environment by investing in the resiliency of cities and their residents, and this includes not just New York, but all important waterfront cities.
As a country we have to realize that the best way to save the planet is to support the fact that our cities all over the country — from Detroit to New Orleans — present the best opportunity for lowering our carbon footprint and are critical players in safeguarding our rural spaces and agricultural lands.
We need to make cities — and people who live and work in cities — a national priority, and invest in innovations in social and civic infrastructure like public housing and transportation and all types of public open spaces on and near the waterfront. This will be the best investment we can make in light of the unpredictability of climate change. It was amazing how grateful people were that the 2011 revival of East River ferry service was there to fill in when the subways weren’t running yet.
Do you think the city should build sea gates?
I hope that we will innovate in many areas and this might include sea gates. It is going to test the city and state’s abilities to harness a coordinated effort to do all types of environmental work that is not on the table today, because of permitting and current regulations. New York City in all the five boroughs needs to raise the level of many of the waterfront lands for storm protection and raise critical infrastructure in our public housing, hospitals, sewage treatment and utility buildings.
We need to put back and increase the dunes, invest in cogeneration and a disbursed power and data network, and even build new sea gates, salt marshes, planted berms and other initiatives. This increases the local expertise with rising sea levels; engineers, architects and ecologists might come up with a range of measures that even the Dutch haven’t tried yet. As important as sea gates might also be state-of-the-art local energy generation and data hubs.
Our first interview with Claire Weisz took place weeks before Hurricane Sandy struck New York. That portion follows:
Can you tell us about some of the current projects you’re working on in the city, like the Rockaway project?
The Rockaway project is the architectural piece of a master plan for a very unusual park. It was basically a little tiny park attached to a very large parking lot that was really part of the dunes and was used for dumping, from Beach 9th Street to Beach 30th Street.
When you say it was used for dumping…
People thought it was derelict land and they’d leave things there. The Rockaways is so challenged environmentally from threats of storms and also because it’s such a mix of high poverty areas, relative transportation isolation, and beautiful environment. It’s become an affordable place for people to move, but it also has real economic challenges and it doesn’t have all of the services and amenities. So one of the target parks that the Bloomberg administration focused on was to create a real amenity out there. So, everyone wanted a pool, but they got instead lots of water play, a skateboard park, more playgrounds, a big lawn for concerts, a football field.
The idea is that you have a functional thing, the maintenance office, a comfort station, but then you have this space and there’s kind of a dune park over here.
Attached to a comfort station is an open air classroom or community meeting space — something that can be a shade structure when nothing is happening, but that also becomes the beach pavilion shared by everyone.
Was the intent to service mainly just that community? Or to allow other people from other communities to use it as well?
The intent was to actually do something similar to what happened in Battery Park City. They created the best playground around and everyone from the whole city showed up there, which is not surprising. That was a similar goal in the Rockaways. To open up the neighborhood. And it’s already happened apparently. People are showing up at the skate park [from all over].
Tell us about another project you’re working on.
Another project — also a waterfront park — is called Transmitter Park. It’s part of the Greenpoint master plan, and it ties together…have you seen the zipper benches?
Down at the Staten Island ferry terminal?
Yes. We were doing the master plan for the park, and trying to figure out the urban design and zoning issues of making people feel like the esplanade was going to be public. We started to explore this idea of a bench that then turned and took you somewhere.
Then we realized that that idea of the benches had a lot to do with some of the things we felt urban design needed to do. One is encompassing an environmental idea of public — what they shared, what things, like trees, need to be protected, and how to occupy space and make really good relationships.
Out of that master plan we’re doing one piece of [Transmitter Park] as a park with Dar Walkovitch of A-com, the landscape architects. And we’ve designed the pier and you’ll see all of the railing, and the benches, and this pretty interesting pier. Only half of it’s being built. It’s actually a branching idea. So it’s an idea of saving money actually to do piers, where you only put the pile foundations, the piers, at what we call pods, and then you have these little bridges that connect the pods.
And that’s just phase one?
Well, already, you’ll go down if you take the ferry, already pieces of it are being built, and as each developer develops property parts of the esplanade will be built. And Bushwick Inlet Park is also part of that master plan.
And what else is on the docket for the master plan? How far into the future does the plan reach?
The whole thing is ongoing and it’s happening as we speak. It’s really interesting to see that public realm being built one piece at a time. And I have to say, on Transmitter Park, I went there the other week and there’s this fantastic new little coffee shop in a place that was a dead end street.
It must be satisfying to see these spaces being occupied.
Completely satisfying to see… people have all these ideas. What’s also fun about Transmitter Park is it’s a site for the Nuit Blanche festival, so that’ll be out there.
The other big project that we have under construction is the sanitation garage and salt shed on Spring Street, and that’s also worth talking about. That’s a big industrial, city project to house three garage units, maintain vehicles, store salt, refuel garbage trucks, house sanitation personnel. And you can see the steel going up.
So what kind of things are you thinking of for the sanitation garage?
Well the sanitation garage is designed and it’s now under construction and really that was developed kind of twofold. How to do a beautiful, but yet, not aggressive building; a building that was very calm and could feel like a good neighbor. But the exciting thing about it is that all the guts of it are kind of shielded by louvers which are kind of composed to make subtle differences on the West side and on the South side.
Is that to disguise the building from the rest of the neighborhood?
In a way. In a way it’s to not say in super graphics, “here’s a big garage here” towards the neighborhood, but towards the West Side Highway it’s very apparent. But the idea is to not make it look like an office building — to actually make it look like the piece of industrial civic architecture that it is. [But] there won’t be any public access to it if you’re not a sanitation worker.
We’re trying to really enhance the industrial quality of it and make people want to go in, and we hope there will be tours actually, of the trucks and everything because there’s a lot of potential for that. And to be able to have kids really access and see how big these machines are, what it takes to kind of clean them. So when they see a garbage truck going down the street picking up recycling they’ll have a whole new appreciation for it.
What’s your background?
I grew up in Canada, and I went to the University of Toronto for architecture. Got my professional degree there. Then, the economy was terrible — so basically, on a lark, I decided to go to Los Angeles. Los Angeles at that point was an interesting place to be as an architect. Frank Gehry had just finished his little house, there was all sorts of dialogue about downtown LA, and people were looking at city halls as community.
I felt very lucky; I worked for architect Charles Moore at the Urban Innovations Group and really got interested in the idea of how design and communities and kind of new things happen.
So that’s always been a real interest, but very much as an architect. I would say at a core I am interested in form, space, light and inhabitability, I’ll call it. I’m interested in architecture being the kind of ‘art of people.’
I went back to school at Yale and that’s where I met Mark Yoes, who is my current partner. After I graduated I worked for Agrest and Gandelsonas, who are very interested in…I’ll call it ‘acupuncture planning.’ The idea that you kind of can read a city and do certain things at certain points that will change the city more. They’re very anti-master plan. I was very compelled by that, so I worked for them.
What do you think New York needs more of? Just more green spaces, or something completely different?
I think what New York always needs more of is passionate, visionary supporters, and essentially clients for design, like Friends of the High Line, like Robby Hammond, Joshua David, and Rory Price at the Battery, and Betsy Barlow Rogers.
There are younger people who get ideas in Jamaica, in Far Rockaway, and see something and they want it to be better than anything in the neighborhood — whether it’s better food, better seating, better shade, better wi-fi — on some level I think that’s what’s really fun about New York. There exists an engagement in expectation, and that’s really what we need more of.
There are so many talented people who have ideas about how to make things and do things. The other piece is supporting local talent in the industry — people who make clothes and people who make railings — and trying to find a way to create affordable spaces so that people can make new things.
So there’s no real fixed idea in your head of what New York should be — it’s just sort of a never-ending potential of what could happen?
To me it’s really about the dynamic — this dynamic of saying, making a living and making money and doing well — that ambition to create a business that’s successful is fantastic. But, coupled with that, we want it to be the BEST interior restaurant, we want it to be the best… those two things working together, not just one or the other. I think it’s that. Then you get the unexpected.
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More recent design work from WXY includes a popular plan for the development of Pier 40 on the Lower West Side of Manhattan, as shown in this video:
Claire Weisz founded WXY Architecture + Urban Design and has focused on creating innovative approaches to public space, structures and cities. She co-founded with Andrea Woodner The Design Trust for Public Space and was its co-executive director. Claire is currently on faculty at New York University’s Wagner School of Public Service and a visiting critic at the University of Toronto, and she has also taught and lectured at Yale University, Parsons’ Graduate Program in the School of Constructed Environments, Columbia University, NJIT and The Pratt Institute. She has served on numerous design award and competition juries and was co-editor of AD magazine’s “Extreme Sites: Greening the Brownfield” issue. Frequently cited in the media and professional circles, Claire is a registered architect in California, New York and New Jersey.
Portait of Claire Weisz by Jessica Bruah; all other images courtesy: WXY
The Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation (GSAPP) is hosting a panel to discuss the future of energy use and the potential repercussions it will have on the building industry . However, this panel is not just a discussion on new energy regulations. Instead the dean of GSAPP, Mark Wigley, has brought together designers and engineers to discuss how transformations of the urban environment will reflect these changes in energy efficiency.
The winner of the adAPT NYC design contest was announced this week. The architecture firm nARCHITECTS collaborated with Monadnock Development LLC and Actors Find HDC to produce “My Micro NYC,” the winning design of a “micro apartment” of roughly 400 square feet.
nARCHITECT’s apartments consist of two areas: a “canvas” bedroom with easily convertible fold down furniture, and a “toolbox” kitchen, bathroom, and storage space. The space is designed to maximize utility and flexibility. The proposed ten-story building comes with plenty of amenities to make up for the small apartment, such as a rooftop garden, fitness room, lounges on each floor, bike storage, and laundry.
The project will be located on East 27th St in Kips Bay, Manhattan. The prefabricated, modular apartments will be manufactured locally at the Brooklyn Navy Yard by Capsys, an Energy Star company.
Here are the floor plans for the proposed apartments:
The 2010 Census showed rapid growth in one– to two-person households in Manhattan, and the current housing supply of studios and one-bedrooms is approximately 800,000 units short of the demand. Mayor Bloomberg announced the contest in July 2012 with the goal of finding creative and design-forward solutions to the housing shortage.
The hope is that the micro apartments will provide a comfortable and stylish home for young professionals interested in living in Manhattan without breaking the bank. The winning design is currently on display at the Museum of the City of New York’s “Making Room” exhibit through September 15th, along with other micro apartment models from around the world.
Don’t miss out on this great panel discussion that addresses the importance of how urban design can resolve not only the physical, but also the mental devastation that Hurricane Sandy was responsible for.
Mindy Fullilove, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health Richard Plunz, Columbia University GSAPP Damon Rich, City of Newark Office of Urban Design Hilary Sample, Columbia University GSAPP
Smashing into housing, health, power, and transportation infrastructures, the historic storm Sandy upended lives and evicted entire communities overnight. Most of the conversations on recovery that followed focused the urban landscape—but what about the mental and somatic ones? In this discussion, urban design and public health experts address the challenges of collective stress and anxiety, and speculate on new ideas toward wellness in rebuilding the New York and New Jersey region.
The General Grant Houses in Manhattanville– Photo Credit: Flickriver
With most of New York City’s public housing projects built before the 1970′s moratorium on high-rise projects, what efforts have been made to make these government buildings more environmentally friendly? President Carter did not include public housing projects in his environmental standards for government-run buildings in the late 70′s, and today their lack of green technology makes them economically and environmentally inefficient. Back in 2009, the Obama Administration promised $4 Billion to update the technology through retrofitting many of the structures. While there may be little desire by policymakers to update the projects by more invasive means, there are cost-effective and environmentally friendly means that we can “green up” older public housing.
Some say the Administration’s plan, which involved switching to lower-energy lightbulbs and improving insulation and windows, is comprised of fairly rudimentary improvements. To be certain, it is extremely difficult to retrofit any pre-1970′s-era building and make it LEED certified, much less the massive brick and concrete towers constructed throughout the five boroughs and in cities nationwide. Other newer technologies, like solar blinds and paneling might suffer from inadequate maintenance as budgets vary over time. That’s not to say we can’t move to “green up” public housing in other ways.
One of the easiest and most useful policies could be the creation of green roofs on the top of the towers. These roofs, in simplest form platforms for lightweight sedum, reduce the amount of sunlight that hits the building infrastructure, thereby cutting down on the amount of energy required to cool the buildings in the summer. While creeping plants like ivy have been known to damage building infrastructure over time, constructing a lattice on the exterior of buildings on their sunny sides could similarly reduce cooling costs by shielding the sides of buildings. The first of these two options would be extremely cost-efficient and highly practical, considering efforts to “green up” the projects is basically a retrofitting process. While the second may involve compromising the building’s structural integrity if not carefully implemented, it could similarly serve as an effective strategy.
Example of a Green Roof– Photo Credit: Environmental Protection Agency
The green roof concept can similarly be applied to the sun-facing sides of buildings– Photo Credit: Conservation Magazine
Other measures, like the collection of rainwater in particular, might be equally effective, but the infrastructure required might prevent their feasibility in an era where few officials want to spend any money on older forms of public housing, instead diverting their attention and funding towards programs like Section 8.
While the future of public housing should clearly involve newer, greener structures — a notable example being the Via Verde development in the Bronx — we can start seeing improvement on older structures today with the simple and cost-effective solutions of green roofs and siding.
As a series of posts on City Atlas have shown, the storm that swamped New York on October 29th pushed climate change onto the national agenda in a way that no other weather event has.
“You can’t say any one single event is reflective of climate change,” William Solecki, the co-chairman of the New York City Panel on Climate Change (and adviser to City Atlas), “But it’s illustrative of the conditions and events and scenarios that we expect with climate change.” (NYT, 10/31/12)
In fact, a NY Timesprofile of Dr. Solecki, written a decade earlier, opened with these prescient details –
“SITTING on Bill Solecki’s desk at Montclair State University was a study outlining the probable effects of global warming toward the end of the century: more frequent severe winter storms, sending floodwaters surging into such places as Jersey City and entrances to the Hudson River tunnels.”
Climate change adds moisture to the atmosphere, which suggests that more frequent and more extensive coastal flooding is in store for the New York area, whatever the strength of any oncoming storms. Other factors behind our region’s changes include warmer oceans, which add energy to tropical storms, and a diminished jet stream that may make the path of those storms different that they were in the past.
Image: PlaNYC
Dr. Solecki, and his partner in chairing the New York City Panel on Climate Change (NPCC), Dr. Cynthia Rosenzweig, shared their thoughts on a panel in the New York Timeson whether, and how, the city should protect itself:
“Now that New York has experienced devastating coastal flooding, how can we recover and rebuild in a way that will enable infrastructural resilience to inevitable future storms, while minimizing a loss of life and livelihoods? Both ‘hard’ engineering interventions – like sea walls and innovative subway and tunnel closings – and ‘soft’ approaches – like reconstructed wetlands and smart designs for coastal communities – are needed.”
Image: MoMA
The idea of a ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ approach reawakens a forward-looking exhibition called ‘Rising Currents: Projectsfor a New York’s Waterfront’ that addresses this urgent question. It was collaboratively organized by the Museum of Modern Art and P.S.1 contemporary art center in 2010. Five multidisciplinary teams of architects, landscape architects, engineers, ecologists, and artists were challenged to re-envision areas of coastlines around the city; and this article is particularly focusing on lower Manhattan, which is Zone 0, the New Urban Ground. Here is a brief reintroduction to this innovative thinking about the future of the city.
Image: MoMa
1. Background
New York has the longest urban waterfront on Earth, with 500 miles. If sea level continues to rise, a huge expanse of coastal land would be inundated. Recent studies on climate change continue to produce more alarming figures, as rising seas create a higher baseline for future storm surges. The projected sea-level rise by 2080 is 2 feet, under normal conditions; in a Rapid Ice Melt Scenario, the rise in sea level would be doubled, according to “Climate Change Adaptation in New York City: Building a Risk Management Response,” the 2010 report prepared for the city by the NPCC.
Image: MoMA
Beyond sea level rise, there would also be more frequent and violent rainstorms that further put the city in danger of inundation. Manhattan used to have marshy edges, but those have been gradually erased since 1600s, when Dutch colonists built docks to facilitate trade, fortifications to prevent attack, and seawalls to protect the growing city from its watery lifeline. To make matters worse, current seawalls will not be able to withstand the predicted storm surge level.
2. Prospective Plan
Combining soft and hard solutions, New Urban Ground is a new paradigm for city infrastructure in Lower Manhattan. Normally, the city is crowded with mass concrete with dark surfaces that absorbs heat and generate urban heat-island effect. In the plan, the area is paved with a mesh of cast concrete and plants selected for their tolerance to pollution and saltwater. These porous green streets act as a sponge for rainwater in a new organic system designed to respond resiliently to daily tidal flows and occasional storm surges
Image: Rising Currents
i) Coastline
New Urban Ground cuts into the island and created urban estuaries; including upland parks, freshwater wetlands and saltwater marshes, which make the shoreline a new, continuous ecosystem. The urban estuaries supporting saltwater and freshwater wetlands alternate with areas zoned for development, creating a balance between economic and ecological sustainability. Streets within the storm-surge flood zone are engineered for 3 different water-carrying capacities: absorption (Level 1), distribution (Level 2), and retention (Level 3). In southernmost tip of Manhattan, there is the Battery Breakwater which is a field of islands, constructed of sediment-filled geotextile tubes and designed to moderate the forces of storm surges, in which located in a shallow saltwater marsh. The East side of lower Manhattan is extended with landfill by one block to create an esker, or ridge, parallel to the shoreline, as well as a park and a saltwater marsh. A linear forest below street level runs along the East River to Brooklyn Bridge, providing a defense from storm surges.
Image: Rising Currents
Consider the urban estuaries, at North Moore Street, a saltwater marsh mitigates the force of incoming water in the event of a storm surge because it is a Level 2 street designed to carry runoff and storm surge flooding off the land and out into the harbor. At Liberty Street, the steep bathymetry of the harbor necessities cuts into the urban landmass to create shallow water. Shallows support the plant and animal ecosystems that ameliorate the impact of upland runoff. A series of elevated walkways creates a platform for recreation, allowing people to occupy the estuary without disruption the natural habitat. The urban edge is raised according to the heights of tide. There are also features like Watershed parks, ferry stop, boat basin, and blue/green roofs that hold water and release it gradually into the streets. Much of the area is transformed into a network if green spaces as automobiles give way to mass transit. This type of Level 2 Street absorbs rainfall and distributes it to local plantings and wetlands. There are even pile-supported walkways connect to the city streets called transverse, and structured saltwater marsh threads though the city block, providing continuity in the harbor ecosystem and a diverse urban experience.
Image: Rising Currents
ii) Infrastructure, Roads and Transportation
West Street is reconstructed and renamed Western Parkway. Much of its width is given over to green space, a light-rail transit loop, pedestrian walkways, and bike paths. Water Street is a level 3 street which runs parallel to the shoreline. It is designed to hold storm-surge volume and drain back to the harbor. The Plants in these zones are selected for their capacity to withstand higher levels of salinity due to inundation from storm surges. Coenties Slip provides a first line of defense against a storm surge.
Image: Rising Currents
In Broadway and Hanover Square, the public and private utility infrastructure is housed in accessible waterproof vaults beneath sidewalk, in which the vaults consist of private utilities (dry system, like electricity and telecommunications) and public utilities (wet systems such as water, gas, and sewers)
Image: Rising Currents
The exhibition demonstrates great examples in constructing a flood-tolerant city with both hard and soft approaches. I believe we can make this city more sustainable.
“I’m hopeful that not only will we rebuild this city and metropolitan area but we use this as an opportunity to build it back smarter. There has been a series of extreme weather incidents. That is not a political statement; that is a factual statement. Anyone who says there’s not a change in weather patterns I think is denying reality… We have a new reality when it comes to these weather patterns; we have an old infrastructure, and we have old systems, and that is not a good combination. That’s one of the lessons that I am going to take from this, personally.”
Our work tends to be very hands on, fun, and playful.
Anne Frederick:
Design is very interdisciplinary by nature. You can connect design into almost any curriculum. In the elementary school we connect to science, art, social studies…design allows you to connect what you are learning to very tangible activities. That becomes empowering for students because they get to actually see their efforts lead to tangible changes. They are building things, planting things…which then actually become a part of their local built environment.
That process is particularly rewarding for students who have a hard time pulling it together in the classroom. Some students are a different kind of learner. Design allows for the different learning styles to be celebrated and exercised…we see our students keep coming back to learn and they get engaged more and more.
Hester Street Collaborative usually works with underserved communities, and brings the techniques and processes of design and community advocacy.
How do you define an “underserved community?”
Anne Frederick: For us, “underserved communities” are communities that might not have a say otherwise in the development of their neighborhood. We take our cues from the people that make up a place. We always partner with groups that are doing organizing work and have a membership, or really have their ear to the ground. These are communities that might be facing issues of displacements, lack of affordable housing — people who have identified themselves as needing the resources of a design studio.
We really look toward the social justice and community-based organizations around the city, who have already identified a need, and we see if the types of resources and services we provide can help. If there is some way we can work together, we then collaboratively shape that scope of work together.
How did the collaborative get started?
Anne Frederick:Hester Street Collaborative was started by myself and the two partners of Leroy Street Studio, where I used to work as an architect. When we moved our offices down to the Lower East Side, we felt that there was an opportunity to create a practice that related to the neighborhood in a meaningful way. It also happened that when we moved downtown, 9/11 occurred, slowing down the whole business and giving us an opportunity to rethink ourselves. It had been an interest of the partners and myself to do something grounded to the community prior to 9/11, but that event really gave us a moment to move in new directions.
We started by developing design education programs with public schools. I had a particular interest in working with young people. Since I had been already teaching in other design-related education programs, which happened to be located across the street from a middle school, we thought, “Why not just walk across the street!”
We take our cues from the people that make up a place.
We started out by founding Ground Up, which is our Design Education program with [public school] MS131. We kicked everything off by thinking about how students could impact spaces, either in their school campuses or community. We started this within a small little sculpture garden in front of the school.
From there we grew into more design education work, as well as working with small community-based organizations on larger open space projects around the neighborhood, and then more recently citywide.
So, you started as a group engaged in projects local to the Lower East Side; are there are any plans to widen your scope?
Anne Frederick: When we started, it was really important to acknowledge the place that we are located. Since the Lower East Side is such a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood, we really wanted to be aware of the impact having a studio in this neighborhood had on accelerating that gentrification in whatever way it does. So it was important to start out with the idea that the [community] needs are here first.
The past ten years we have really focused locally, even though our mission is truly citywide. We have started here, but through word of mouth and with the help of our partners, [we almost always work collaboratively with other organizations on each project] have received the opportunity to work in other neighborhoods.
Right now we feel we are at a moment where we feel we can continue to contribute to our neighborhood, but begin to serve more communities. We are thinking about how some of the tools and expertise of designers can aid social justice movements not just near us, but throughout the city.
So the project development and design process is guided by teaming up with community organizations, rather than proposing design plans from a location far removed.
Anne Frederick: Exactly, that is very important to us.
What is the usual process for making the type of public space projects Hester Street Collaborative develops?
Anne Frederick: Usually it starts with some stakeholders — organizations or individuals — who have identified a need for something.
I’ll use the East River Waterfront as an example — there was a coalition of organizations who are imbedded in that neighborhood, and who wanted to have a say in the development of the [local] waterfront.
They were concerned that the further development of the waterfront would accelerate the gentrification of the area, and place additional pressure on the constituencies who are already being squeezed out. This group had already identified needs, and just by being based in the neighborhood and having relationships with the organizations in the coalition, HSC started to have conversations with the organization to see if they needed help with the community organizing process for envisioning and visualizing the waterfront.
Usually the work evolves from a group or coalition, who expresses interest about a public or open space issue and we will partner with them. Those partnerships can be very long term, because these projects just don’t happen overnight. Projects of this nature can happen over many years and decades.
Does HSC work with grassroots organizations [bottom up] in addition to city-based agencies [top down]?
Anne Frederick: Yes, we work with city agencies a lot. Often we are working to be a bridge between the more grassroots groups and city agencies. For example we have been working on a project titled People Make Parks for several years with Partnerships for Park. The project is attempt to make the parks capital process more transparent and easier to engage with. For groups who want to have a role in how their parks are redesigned, People Make Parks provides a road map for that process.
Do you ever face any resistance from the communities you engage with?
Anne Frederick: Working with lots of people is never easy. Democracy is not a neat and tidy process. Part of the interesting part of collaboration is allowing different opinions and concerns to arise, and work themselves out. We don’t advocate for one view or the other but be try to develop a broad platform where participation can happen. Not everyone is always going to be happy, but that is the nature of the beast.
So HSC is broken down into education programs, advocacy, and community design. What kinds of projects and activities fall under those categories?
Anne Frederick: For the education programs – we work in public schools, with elementary, middle, and high school students all in the LES community. We are really committed to have that longer term community engagement here, [Lower East Side] so we can have a more in depth experience with individual students rather than serving thousands of students. One of the goals of the design education programs is to impact the youth that we are working with. We feel that the best way to do that is through sustained engagement. For example, the elementary school we have been working with, we have been building an outdoor classroom (school garden) since 2004. Every year, each group of students who participates, adds another layer to it. Sometimes we work with the same students from grades 2 through 5.
Thats awesome! You get to see some of your students grow up and witness the development of their education.
Anne Frederick: Yes, its a great process.
What falls under “community design,” and “advocacy”?
Anne Frederick: In regards to our community design, we work with organizations and constituency groups in the neighborhood, and providing resources of planners, artists and designers to impact the community space. Like I said, often those are very long-term projects. For example, we have been working on the Allen and Pike Street corridors since 2004, and we coordinate community participation, to initiating the the capital process and developing an ongoing series of public art and design interventions at the site, as a way to continue to draw attention to that space, and envision what it could be.
Design allows for students with different learning styles to be celebrated.
Often there’s a fluidity between our educational programs, advocacy, and community design because our students will contribute to the art installation. Each area of our organization is not distinct from the others, but all are working together to empower communities to impact change of community public spaces. We sort of address the issues we care about through these different ways.
For us, advocacy is about working with our partners to try and bring about the change they want to see in their communities. So we work with with elected officials and city agencies to channel community concerns and aspirations.
How do you feel that this sort of process helps to build social connections between community members?
Anne Frederick: Our work tends to be very hands on, fun, and playful. So providing opportunities for individuals to participate in a fun interactive way, is a much less intimidating format than going to a town hall meeting and having to stand up in front of a lot of people and voice your concern. We try to take the process and meet people where they are at, to insure their ongoing participation.
How does Hester Street Collaborative envision a more sustainable city?
Anne Frederick: Having engaged, invested citizens that have a clear and transparent ability to effect change in their neighborhood. [That] allows for more people to invest more effort in the place where they live. If you think your thoughts and actions matter, you are going to be more of a steward of your environment — that, for me, is sustainability.
About Hester Street Collaborative:
Hester Street Collaborative’s (HSC) mission is to empower residents of underserved communities by providing them with the tools and resources necessary to have a direct impact on shaping their built environment. We do this through a hands-on approach that combines design, education, and advocacy. HSC seeks to create more equitable, sustainable, and vibrant neighborhoods where community voices lead the way in improving their environment and neglected public spaces.
HSC was founded in 2002 by the architecture firm Leroy Street Studio (LSS). The East New York Urban Youth Corp, a nonprofit group specializing in building rehab and community outreach, approached LSS to work on an affordable housing project and Community Center. As a result, the LSS partners/HSC co-founders designed and built a series of playful interventions for the courtyards, as well as a lobby with local sculptors and tile makers, and future tenants. The lobby design replaced standard tiles with mosaics and hand carved clay tiles, and installed ferro-cement planters in the courtyard. The transformation was dramatic, and the project led to the formation of Hester Street Collaborative.
About Anne Frederick:
As the founding director of HSC, Anne has worked to develop a community design-build practice that responds to the needs of under-resourced NYC communities. Her unique approach to community design integrates education and youth development programming with participatory art, architecture, and planning strategies. This approach is rooted in partnership and collaboration with various community based organizations, schools and local residents. Prior to founding HSC, Anne worked as an architect at Leroy Street Studio Architecture and as a design educator at Parsons School of Design and the New York Foundation for Architecture. Anne graduated from Parsons School of Design and The New School for Social Research in 1998, and has represented the work of HSC at various conferences, lectures and exhibitions.
I am from Bogotá, Colombia. It was not till after three years of living in NYC that I found out that Bogotá is now considered one of the best examples of urban climate leadership. What I witnessed around 10 years ago was the very encouraging vision of two mayors in Bogotá. The first mayor was interested in changing the citizens’ behavior and mentality, and the second one was interested in beautifying the city.
The first one, a mathematician, philosopher, and politician by profession, created social campaigns to generate “a global citizenship consciousness,” targeting citizens living in the capital, with origins from all over the country, and idealizing a greener city with features like bicycle paths. The other, an urban planner, put some of these ideas into action: citizens noticed a more organized, cleaner, and greener city with trees, bicycles, beautiful sidewalks, parks, rivers, and lakes. These men, Antanas Mockus and Enrique Peñalosa, had an incredible impact in making Bogotá a better place to live.
And maybe that is what is now is visible in NYC, where indeed there seem to be more and more people concerned about the city. More campaigns encouraging citizens to recycle and to use paper bags instead of plastic ones. More people doing outdoor events, exercising, using public transportation and biking. According to a survey reported in theNew York Times, six years after the Bloomberg administration began adding 255 miles of bicycle lanes onto streets previously dedicated to automobiles, New Yorkers have gradually become accustomed to bicycle lanes. And even though bicycling still remains far from mainstream in New York City, what is true is that lanes are another option for greener transportation. According to Dr. Barrie Cassileth, in an interview following the NYT survey, these bike lanes “will get rid of some of the pollution from automobiles and reduce the amount of automobile traffic” on NYC streets. Dr. Cassileth went on to note that bikes make for a cleaner, safer, more inviting, and healthier city.
As Ricardo Montezuma, one of the most renowned architects from Colombia, affirms, “the great achievements…are the result of a new kind of government centered on issues rather than party politics or ideology… Residents feel a new sense of ownership, belonging, and pride in the city, that was visible in the use of ‘ciclo-vía nocturna’ (night ciclo-vía, a bicycling event on Bogotá’s bike paths), an evening in December 2002 when more than 3 million people celebrated in the streets.”
Here in NYC, Mayor Bloomberg has taken significant steps to lessen our environmental impact. However, he can’t revamp the city alone. The model that Bogotá has established can and should lead the world in the direction of environmentally-friendly cities. Perhaps, as we try to create a greener city, we should be looking south to the efforts of the mayors in Bogotá.
Check out the documentary CITIESONSPEED – Bogotá Change for a closer examination of the steps that Mockus and Peñalosa took to make Bogotá the environmental leader city when they governed.
Yo soy de Bogotá, Colombia. Sin embargo, no fue sino hasta después de tres años de vivir acá en NYC, que oí que Bogotá había sido considerada uno de los mejores ejemplos de ciudades urbana según el Climate Leadership Broup. Como muchas ciudadanos, lo que pude visualizar hace unos 10 años fue a un par de alcaldes visionarios optando por una mejor ciudad. El primero, se interesó por el cambio del comportamiento y mentalidad de los ciudadanos, mientras que el segundo, se interesó por el embellecimiento de la ciudad.
El primero, un matemático, filosofo y político de profesión, creó campañas sociales para generar una “conciencia de ciudadano global” en los ciudadanos que vivían en la ciudad y que venían de todas partes del país. Les hablaba de una Bogotá más verde con ciclo-rutas. El otro, un urbanista, consiguió poner estas ideas en acciones. Los ciudadanos vimos una ciudad más organizada, limpia y verde, con más arboles, bicicletas, bonitos andenes, parques, ríos y lagos. Estos dos hombres, Antanas Mockus y Enrique Peñalosa, tuvieron un gran impacto.
Y quizás es eso mismo, lo que hoy en día se puede percibir en NYC, donde al parecer hay más y más ciudadanos preocupados por su ciudad. Más campañas en pro del reciclaje, alentando a los ciudadanos el uso de bolsas de papel en lugar de bolsas de plástico. Más gente realizando actividades afuera, ejercitándose, haciendo uso del transporte público y usando sus bicicletas. De acuerdo a una encuesta del New York Times, seis años luego de que la administración Bloomberg diera inicio a la planeación de unas 225 millas de ciclo-rutas, los Neoyorkinos han conseguido acostumbrarse al uso de las mismas. Y aunque el ciudadano común aun no termina por acostumbrarse a desplazarse en bicicleta, lo cierto es que las ciclo-rutas han sido ejemplo de una opción mas ecológica de transporte. Según una entrevista realizada a Barrie Cassileth, “estas ciclo-rutas servirán para disminuir de alguna forma la polución producida por los vehículos así como del trafico mismo” en las calles de Nueva York. El mismo Cassileth afirmó que las bicicletas harían de la ciudad una ciudad más limpia, segura, acogedora y saludable.
Como afirma Ricardo Montezuma, uno de los arquitectos mas conocidos de Colombia, “los grandes logros … son el resultado de un a nueva forma de gobierno mas enfocado en problemáticas sociales que en ser tradicionalmente partidista… Los ciudadanos tienen un nuevo sentimiento de autonomía, pertenencia, y orgullo hacia su ciudad, que se hizo visible en el uso de la ciclo vía nocturna de Diciembre de 2002 cuando mas de 3 millones de personas se reunieron en las calles“.
Acá en NYC, el alcalde Bloomberg, ha dado grandes pasos para mejorar el impacto ambiental. Sin embargo, esto es algo que el no puede hacer solo. El modelo que Bogotá estableció podría y debería ser seguido por otras ciudades apostándole así a un mundo mas amigable con el medio ambiente. Tal vez, mientras tratamos de crear una ciudad mas verde, deberíamos observar los esfuerzos realizados en el sur por estos alcaldes de Bogotá.
Para mayor información relacionada con los programas puestos en práctica por Mockus y Peñalosa, observa el documental CITIESONSPEED – Bogotá Change.
The Hearst Tower, designed by the acclaimed British architect, Norman Foster, is a fairly recent addition to the NYC skyline. If you are not yet familiar with Foster’s work, you may want to check out his other projects including the Reichstag in Berlin, housing the German Parliament; the Great Court at the British Museum in London; and the HSBC Main Building in Hong Kong. As you scroll through Foster’s expansive list of projects, you may notice a pattern beginning to emerge – glass, transparency, geometric shapes curving and twisting – all coalescing into Foster’s unique style of modernity.
In the design of the Hearst Tower, Foster merges the old and new, creating a distinctive 46-story gleaming glass tower atop the Hearst building’s original stone base. The original Hearst building, commissioned by newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst and designed by Joseph Urban, is a six-story 1920s Art Deco building that served as the New York headquarters for the Hearst Corporation. From the façade of the building, sculptural figures representing various aspects of the Arts, Commerce, and Industry celebrate the dynamism of the city.
The Hearst building was reportedly landmarked in 1988, but the original building plans called for a tower above the structure. With approval to construct a tower above the Hearst building, Foster reconstructed the interior of the original building while maintaining the historic façade. The new interior greets the visitor with a dramatic six-story lobby and the sound of cascading water. The water feature is part of the “Ice Fall” installation, a waterfall that flows besides the escalators.
Beyond its aesthetic attributes, the Hearst Tower, constructed in 2006, is a model of sustainability. The building was the first skyscraper in NYC to receive the U.S. Green Buildings Councils Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold Certification. The building was designed to consume 26 percent less energy than a traditional building. The rooftop features a rainwater collection system. Quite impressively, 90 percent of the steel used is recycled, and the tower’s exterior triangular frame further saves about 2,000 tons of steel.
The Hearst Tower is located at 300 West 57th Street, near Columbus Circle in Manhattan.
New York has many landmarks that characterize the city, capturing its essence as an environment at the intersection of nature and culture. Central Park is chief among them, for its size, its centrality, and its recognizability to tourists. Ubiquitous in numerous classic movies, the park serves as an enormous lung for the city, providing fresh air and green views in an otherwise concrete jungle. Its history is deeply interesting. Perhaps the most interesting fact about it is that, despite the common conception of most parks, Central Park is actually not natural and its construction likely demanded even more time and resources than most New Yorkers imagine, given that the land used to be an irregular area full of swamps, cliffs, and rocky outcroppings.
The Central Park Conservancy is taking advantage of this complicated history by offering a conference on Friday, October 5th focused on the park’s woodlands, design, management, and stewardship. The six hour conference will be held at the Museum of the City of New York and many architects will have the opportunity to attend and learn how to bridge the gap between nature and culture.
Manhattan– then and now. Photo Credit– The Welikia Project (www.welikia.org)
As cities grow greener and the urban framework works to maximize its environmental gifts like waterways and parks, certain questions must be asked. Cities in their beginnings were founded in naturally advantageous places such as near waterways, harbors, and fertile valleys among others. Today however, the most naturally gifted cities have fallen behind those places where human ingenuity has fostered a desire to constantly reinvent the urban fabric such that the once powerful connection between the city and nature has been broken. Modern consumers in urban areas choose largely to ignore where their produce, meats, construction materials, and other non-urban items come from. Furthermore, we also largely choose to ignore the fact that what we perceive as “natural,” or from nature, is quite often the product of human beings.
The terms “first nature” and “second nature” were first coined by William Cronon in his seminal work on Chicago, Nature’s Metropolis. Cronon uses “first nature” to define the purely natural aspects of cities, especially those god-given advantages that give some cities a leg up on others. A prime example of this is New York’s deep, one-of-a-kind harbor. “Second nature,” however, is used to describe those advantages that humans have created within the urban framework. Public transportation, street systems, and, most importantly, parks, are all “second nature” advantages in cities.
Take a moment to think about this. Many things that we consider most natural about our cities and our country (the greenbelts, the park systems, the green grass of the suburbs) would not exist in the true sense of “first nature.” In fact, the original grid plan for New York included one large park that was laid out so that the city would not totally override the natural state of Manhattan Island. That park, which was then military parade ground, would ultimately become Tompkins Square Park (and its current iteration is far from “first nature”). As the city grew outward towards uptown, it took “second nature” human efforts by city officials and urban landscape architects Fredrick Law Olmstead and Carl Vaux to create, rather than necessarily preserve, greenery in the form of Central and Prospect Parks.
While these parks impart a system of “natural beauty,” it is important to remember that they are as much the product of human ingenuity as they are products of nature. The tall leafy trees were carefully planted, the grass properly maintained at considerable cost, the manmade lakes (yes, they are not all natural) and countless other landscaping features were all designed to give New York and its residents yet another advantage, another way of solidifying the city’s place at the top of the urban hierarchy. Even the suburbs, which represent a compromise between rural and urban, were carefully laid out and landscaped. Certainly New York City, and Manhattan in particular, has changed greatly since its true “first nature” heyday in the early 17th century at the beginning of the Dutch settlement era. Because of this, we cannot truly consider today’s pockets of urban greenery as being the same “first nature” as the original Manhattan Island.
What’s “natural” about urban parks? This photo shows the construction of Prospect Park in Brooklyn. Photo Credit– Olmstead and America’s Urban Parks (http://theolmstedlegacy.wordpress.com)
It’s a radical way of rethinking nature and the environment within cities. Is anything in the urban framework still truly “first nature”? Obviously there are some pockets where mother nature shines through in her true form across all five boroughs, but the overall lack of true “first nature” features in cities forces us to reconsider what we think of as natural within the urban landscape. In fact, some of the only places left largely untouched directly by man are in danger of pollution from the secondhand effects of urbanization. We must recognize that the things that we consider little oases of greenery are not natural. Rather, they are human products of an era in which small islands of nature could be actively placed within cities to make the urban habitat more livable. Furthermore, this realization forces us to rethink how we explore “nature” in an urban context.
The next time you go to a park, consider the human input required to maintain it, the careful planning of its undulating pathways and changes in elevation, the presence of thick green grass. This acknowledgement of the human element in “second nature” greenery does not necessarily have to decrease your enjoyment of such spaces. Instead, we must be cognizant of the fact that when we canoe down the Bronx River, our ability to do so is not necessarily a “first nature” ability, but rather the product of tremendous human ingenuity to restore, protect and maintain a quasi– “first nature” state. When we revel in the long bike path and the breeze biking down Riverside Park, we must remember that it took tremendous human effort for that possibility even to occur.
While we cannot and should not forget Mother Nature, it would be a disservice to urban environmentalists past, present, and future to assume that these natural elements were simply the products of “first nature”. To ignore the human element would be to forget how far we’ve come in making our cities organic and more connected to nature, and similarly to forget our tremendous ability to continue this trend towards a brighter, greener urban future.
Here is a photo of the construction of the “natural” beauty of Central Park in Manhattan. Photo Credit– The Bowery Boys (http://theboweryboys.blogspot.com/2008/07/podcast-creation-of-central-park.html)
Interesting links on the topic of NYC’s first and second nature states:
To see what New York City’s parks looked like before they became the islands of green that we know them as today, peruse the “Before They Were Parks” website provided by the Department of Parks and Recreation.
If you would like to explore Manhattan Island in its original “first nature” state at the time of the initial Dutch settlement, check out The Welikia Project, or pick up a copy of Welikia Director Dr. Eric C. Sanderson’s book Manhatta: A Natural History of New York City.
The High Line has quickly become one of the most beloved and iconic public spaces in New York City. As anyone who has visited the site can attest, it’s always thronged with people: New Yorkers, out-of-towners, foreign tourists, you name it. It manages to seamlessly combine the incessant hum of the city itself with the peace and tranquility of a much larger public park. Even developers love the site as adjoining spaces are attracting starchitect design talent and fetching ridiculous prices on the housing market.
Everyone now has cause to rejoice anew as the third and final stage of the High Line project is now underway. Known as the High Line at the Rail Yards, this last section will go from W. 30th to W. 34th streets in a large arc around the rail yards, ending in an abutment of the West Side Highway. The official groundbreaking for this stage of the project was on Thursday, September 20th and this section will be open to the public the first two weekends of October for those who have registered.
The final stage is scheduled to be completed sometime in 2014 and with the High Line being such a renowned success, who knows what similar projects will follow it. That particular area of the city has been a hotbed of development contention for years with plans having been proposed for an Olympic stadium, the Moynihan station expansion of Penn Station, the current extension of the 7 train, and myriad other projects. The completion of the High Line will be a small but significant step in the right direction for the revitalization of the area.
Soak up the lingering summer sun while you still can! If you’re in North Brooklyn, there’s (finally) a new waterfront park for you to do just that.
The Mayor’s office recently announced the opening of the $12 million redevelopment of WNYC Transmitter Park along the East River in Brooklyn. The project includes 1.6 acres of open space and increased access to the Greenpoint waterfront. Located on the site of the former WNYC radio transmission towers, the new park includes a children’s play area, a pedestrian bridge, and nature gardens.
Area residents agitated for a summer opening date and they will have to wait even longer for the full completion of the park. As part of a 2005 rezoning agreement, the Bloomberg administration promised North Brooklyn residents over 54 acres of open space throughout Greenpoint and Williamsburg. Here’s hoping this opening is just the first step in the restoration of community and open spaces throughout the city.
[Coming soon in City Atlas: an interview with Claire Weisz of WXY Studio, designers for the park.]
Corresponding to the advent of the Olympic Games in London, the Storefront for Art and Architecture has created a “Post-Olympic city” exhibition displaying the work of photographer Jon Pack and filmmaker Gary Hustwit. Pack and Hustwit are working to document the legacy of the Olympic Games in a variety of host cities, using photography, video, and memorabilia. So far, the duo has documented the Games in Athens, Barcelona, Mexico City, Los Angeles, Montreal, Lake Placid, Rome, and Sarajevo; and they plan on visiting Beijing, Moscow, Berlin, and London. They are currently compiling their work in a book that will be available in the spring of 2013. On August 14th , the Storefront hosted an event where the artists and a group of knowledgeable panelists discussed the effects of the Olympics on host cities once the Closing Ceremony is over.
The panelists and the audience discussed the cases where host cities were able to create sustainable infrastructure— and the cases where cities spent billions just to dismantle everything they had spent billions to build. Mexico City is an example of a city that benefited from the ’68 Olympics, tripling in size and, significantly, continues to use the stadiums it constructed. It’s universally considered an honor to host Olympics, but that is not the only reason cities bid for the Olympics. They often receive federal money and sponsorship to help build infrastructure, such as subway systems and parks. Additionally, the tourism helps local businesses immensely. The conversation took an interesting turn when Gary Hustwit asked the question, “What cities need this development?” He pointed out that Los Angeles hosted the Olympics in 1984, and did not need to build anything new— so the city made a lot of money off of the Games. He said, “Now you cannot tell that it ever hosted the Olympics, but maybe that is the sign of success.” London, on the other hand, plans to keep only 6 out of the 22 venues that were just built.
One member of the audience brought up the fact that often cities try to improve their image by cleaning up shanty towns and displacing people without having a sustainable plan for relocation. The fact that so much is done without including citizens in the discussion can create ethical problems. The artists’ work contributes to the existing interesting debate about the positive, as well as negative, legacies of the Olympic Games.
Unfortunately, the exhibit has closed, but click here if you want to see what the Storefront for Art and Architecture has coming up. Have thoughts on an Olympic Legacy, whether good or bad? Tweet at us @cityatlas.
Green spaces and parks are one of the many ways that New York City creates places that feel special and welcoming to many different people.
Sometimes immigrants like myself feel the necessity to go to some places that somehow resemble our home countries or cities. A couple of months ago, a Chilean friend’s friend took me to the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, not just to enjoy the view and the comfort of being outside, but because it was quite similar to “his” Valparaiso. This is one example of the way that the spaces of New York provides inspirational and welcoming places for people from all over the world to enjoy.
Places don’t necessarily have to be like our home countries in order to feel welcoming and comfortable. Just as my friend likes the Promenade, I really love Prospect Park, specifically the Botanical Garden. The place might not resemble any specific place from my home country that I remember, but it definitely allows me to feel that New York has a place for everyone. It is a refuge, a place to appreciate that New York is not only about a hectic life style, loud traffic, commerce, and waste. The city’s parks welcome many visitors, inviting them to relax for a few moments and enjoy a breathable moment within the city.
A veces los inmigrantes como yo, tenemos la necesidad de ir a ciertos lugares que nos recuerden de alguna forma nuestras ciudades. Por fortuna Nueva York es tan grande y tiene tantas ciudades tan diferentes, que los inmigrantes pueden encontrar esos lugares que precisamente les permite como sentirse en casa. Tal vez como China Town les permite a los chinos recordar su país, o al menos, algunas de sus tradiciones.
Hace un par de meses, este chileno, amigo de un amigo, me llevó al Promenade diciendo que encontraba esta ciudad particularmente similar a su ciudad natal, Valparaíso. Por su puesto, el lugar no es solamente hermoso como se puede observar en las fotos, sino que también resulta que nos permite a nosotros los inmigrantes a ver esa parte de Nueva York que inspira y que aún conserva esa arquitectura hermosa del siglo XIX.
Ahora, de la misma manera en que el disfruta el Promenade, a mi me encanta Prospect y más especificamente el Jardín Botánico que esta en medio del parque de Prospect. El lugar tal vez no me recuerde algún sitio específico de mi país de origen, pero definitivamente me permite sentir que Nueva York tiene un espacio para todos. Y principalmente, un lugar para notar que la ciudad no se trata solamente de un sitio con un estilo de vida frenético, lleno de tráfico, negocios y desperdicio, sino que también es un lugar que es capaz de darle la bienvenida a muchos visitantes, invitándolos a disfrutar de su particularidad en términos de una ciudad también bastante respirable.
