Freshkills Park Blog

Four giant coal gasometers, built as part of Vienna’s municipal gas works in the late 1800s, have been refashioned into a complex of residential, commercial and municipal facilities.  Formerly Europe’s largest gas plant, the gasometers now house 800 apartments, a student dormitory, a music hall, over 70 shops, restaurants, bars and cafes, a movie theater and the city’s municipal archive.

Researchers at the University of Milan Bicocca in Monza, Italy are working to harvest energy offset by the mixture of fresh and salt water.  The process uses electrodes to draw apart positively charged sodium ions and negatively charged chlorine ions in salt water, then forces those ions away from the electrodes by flooding them with fresh water. 

UbuWeb, the large online archive of avant-garde art, has posted a streaming video of Gordon Matta-Clark‘s 1972 “Freshkill,” filmed at the Fresh Kills Landfill.  The short film depicts the destruction of the artist’s truck by a bulldozer.  The video is also available for download as an MP4.

Greenmuseum interviews Terry Hazen, Director of UC Berkeley’s Center for Environmental Biotechnology and the Head of Ecology at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, about bioremediation, its benefits and its hazards.  Hazen is a well-spoken expert on the subject of remediating contaminated sites and the microorganisms that can be used to do so. 

The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) project aims to build awareness of the economic benefits of biodiversity by quantifying the costs of biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation, and to offer strategies developed through science, economics and policy to move toward net growth in biodiversity. 

We’re excited to present a new giveaway we’ve started distributing on our free, public bus tours of the Freshkills Park site: packets of native meadow seed!  This seed was wild-collected in the New York metro area by the Greenbelt Native Plant Center, which will be operating a seven-acre founder seed farm in our first phase of North Park development. 

Landscape ecologist Eric Sanderson talks at TED about the Manahatta Project:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3z1cCT2NP4k&w=507&h=370]

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has identified nearly 4,100 contaminated sites nationally, including abandoned mines, disused factories and some landfills, that could be suitable for renewable energy projects–primarily solar and wind power, and some biomass harvesting.  Contaminated sites are considered particularly appealing for renewable energy projects because they are less likely than other sites to be prized for their habitat value.

Toward the Sentient City, an exhibit organized by The Architectural League of New York, examines the implications for architecture of the proliferation of sensor, mobile and other new technologies.  According to curator Mark Shepard:

The exhibition examines the relationship between ubiquitous computing, architecture and the city in terms of the active role its citizens might play – or neglect to play – as both designers and inhabitants, in the unfolding techno-social situations of near-future urban environments.

Artist Maya Lin is exhibiting both architectural sculptures and environmental installations this fall in and around New York City.  Among the sculptures on view at Salon 94 are number of “asteroids” constructed from children’s toys, bottle caps and other recycled materials, as well as topographical formations carved from atlases and phone books. 

A volunteer coordinator from Transportation Alternatives and Staten Island bike advocates will be leading a ride around the borough tomorrow morning, October 10th, ending at Lee’s Tavern in Dongan Hills.  The group will be “discussing the current challenges facing cyclist, pedestrian and mass transit users in Staten Island, and developing some advocacy plans for the future.” 

The Indianapolis Museum of Art is in progress developing the largest museum park in the US: 100 acres: The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art and Nature Park.  Formerly a construction site and gravel pit, the 100-acre parkland has evolved naturally into woodland and wetland areas and includes a 35-acre lake. 

A master plan by Grant Associates of the UK has been selected from an international competition for the design of Singapore’s largest garden project to date, Marina South Gardens.  The architecture and landscape for the ambitious plan are inspired by orchid anatomy and include a series of micro-ecosystem conservatories to house plants from Mediterranean, temperate and tropical climates.  

This Saturday and Sunday, October 10th and 11th, is Open House New York weekend.  OHNY’s 7th annual offerings include building tours and site visits of unique locations across the five boroughs.  Staten Island is represented by its array of historic buildings as well as two Parks-related listings: Freshkills Park and the Greenbelt Native Plant Center (GNPC). 

Veru-Tek Technologies has developed a spin on phytoremediation to clean up contaminated soil and groundwater on brownfield sites.  Where traditional phytoremediation uses in situ plants, Veru-Tek uses extracts derived from plants, nanometals produced from plant extracts, and other natural substances to dissolve and oxidize contaminants (like coal tar, chemical solvents and petroleum byproducts) in place, turning them into non-toxic compounds. 

The Brooklyn Bridge Park Development Corporation will be leading free public tours of one of its first phases of park development this Sunday, October 4th, as part of the Atlantic Avenue Development Corporation’s Atlantic Antic street festival.  The Pier 6 section of the park, which connects with Atlantic Avenue, is scheduled to open in early 2010, will include a 1.6-acre playground, a dog run, a promenade, a restaurant and three sand volleyball courts.  

Randy Ludacer’s performance at the Freshkills Park site last Saturday was terrific.  An eager audience poured out of our Parks bus at North Mound to hear Randy serenede them (and the millions of tons of discarded packaging buried underfoot) with the new album of songs he’d recorded for the event, including “The Prettiest Package” and “This Landfill is Your Landfill.” 

Two projects in San Francisco are turning underused and unsightly public spaces into green urban gardens and meeting places.  Pavement to Parks, a program run by the city’s Planning Department, converts wasted street space and rights-of-way into plazas and parks. 

Spencer Finch’s The River That Flows Both Ways–the first public art commission on the High Line–is an installation of 700 panes of colored glass on the Chelsea Market building, between 15th and 16th Streets on the elevated park at 10th Avenue. 

The New York Times features a 2,200 square foot native woodland garden being planted on the NYU campus.  George Reis, NYU’s supervisor of sustainable landscapes, was taken with the idea of evocative and site-specific planting, as well as with the Manahatta Project, an exhibition that envisions the island of Manhattan upon Henry Hudson’s arrival 400 years ago.