Tags: audio/video

For our Freshkills Park Talk two weeks back, Dr. Steven Handel shared insights into the emerging field of urban restoration ecology, which focuses on the challenge of bringing ecological diversity back to degraded lands like brownfields and landfills.  He discussed his research at the Freshkills Park site and others in the region and went on to describe how his expertise has informed the design of Orange County, CA’s Great Park.

[vimeo vimeo.com/4854719]

The newest episode of PBS Thirteen’s online video series The City Concealed features Freshkills Park.  Park Administrator Eloise Hirsh gives a guided tour of the site and its history, punctuating the scenic drive with a look around the landscape of the future South Park and a view into the Department of Sanitation’s waste byproduct treatment facilities.

Our big thanks to Jerome Chou and Grace Tang from Field Operations for last Thursday’s Freshkills Park Talk on designing the park. Jerome delivered a great primer on landscape architecture (including a history in two slides!) and talked about the mandate for new model of practice given the nature of the site and the enormity of the project, both in space and time scale.

[vimeo vimeo.com/4951004]

Last week, the Municipal Arts Society (MAS) hosted a panel called Urban Parks in the Twenty-First Century: Creating a New Model.  Park designers, administrators and other experts discussed the some of New York City’s most innovative new park projects: Concrete Plant Park  in the South Bronx, Riverside South on the Upper West Side, and, of course, Freshkills Park.  

A nice little segment about Freshkills Park has been posted on the NBC Nightly News site.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLBE5QAYXp8&w=507&h=370]

Some required viewing for anyone concerned with consumption habits: The Story of Stuff.  The 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled story takes you on a provocative tour of our consumer-driven culture.  From resource extraction through sale, use and disposal, the video looks at all the stuff in our lives and how it affects communities at home and abroad.

Last Thursday’s installment of the Freshkills Park Talks lecture series was terrific.  Ed Toth, Director of the Greenbelt Native Plant Center (GNPC), discussed the importance of floral biodiversity in urban settings, the GNPC’s history and operations–it’s one of the only municipal native plant providers in the country, if not the only one–and several citywide initiatives it’s taken on recently, including the Great Pollinator Project. 

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1DxwUHNd08&w=507&h=370]

Waste? is a new web documentary series featuring people whose livelihoods capitalize on what gets thrown away: canners scouring the streets for redeemables; engineers powering their breweries with waste water; architects constructing homes out of tires.  The series explores what motivates this type of reuse: worldviews, necessity, bottom lines. 

On-air on NY1 right now: an interview and tour with Freshkills Park Administrator Eloise Hirsh about two sections of the park that will be open within the next year-and-a-half: the Owl Hollow Soccer Fields and Schmul Park.  You can watch the clip online or on TV, airing all day on NY1.

TED talks are the best.  Here’s a video of Saul Griffith from Makani Power talking about the giant kites he’s been working on.  Kites with wind turbines mounted on them. These ‘kite turbines’ harness energy from high-altitude wind currents and send it earthward through cables. 

This is pretty inspiring: Ohio Valley Creative Energy (OVCE) is trying to build art studios for glass, ceramics and metal work, powered by landfill gas.  They’re focused on public education about sustainability through artwork and big-idea design, and they worked with a group of art students from Meyzeek Middle school in Louisville, KY to create this stop-motion animated video demonstrating how methane gas can be used as a renewable energy source for use by arts facilities.