Tags: design

12 years since James Corner Field Operations won the City of New York design competition.  In 2006, NYC Parks assumed responsibility for implementing the project using Field Operations’ Draft Master Plan as a conceptual guide. The basic framework of the plan integrates three separate systems—programming, wildlife, and circulation—into one cohesive and dynamic unit.

We love the New Springville Greenway. Completed this summer, the 3.2 mile bike and walking path runs the length of Freshkills Park on the eastern edge along Richmond Avenue. To celebrate the new 3-mile greenway, we’re sharing NYC Parks Landscape Architect Andrew Deer’s 3 favorite places along the way.

This October, the Freshkills Park Alliance is participating in Archtober, a month-long festival of architecture activities, programs and exhibitions throughout New York City. Every day in Archtober has its own “Building of the Day,” giving visitors the chance to tour and learn more about architecture in the five boroughs.

On the 4th of October 2015, Staten Island officially welcomed the addition of the New Springville Greenway, a 3.2-mile pedestrian and bicycle pathway alongside Richmond Avenue. The development is part of the ongoing NYC Parks effort to transform Freshkills Park, which is nearly three times the size of Central Park, from a former landfill into a public space.

With a population of nearly 5.4 million people on less than 300 square miles of land, Singapore is the third densest country in the world. Once a part of Malaysia, it became an independent nation in 1965, and by doing so, the new island city-state began to increasingly rely on importing food to feed its people.

On January 16, 2014, Freshkills Park Alliance signed a twin park agreement with Ariel Sharon Park (built on the former Hiriya landfill) in Tel Aviv. This agreement recognizes the similar challenges and opportunities that the two transformative projects face as urban landfill-to-park conversions.

How do you design a space to maximize its social and ecological resiliency? A green space where the community gathers and plants help clean the air and absorb storm water. You might think that such a space could only be achieved in a large park like Freshkills, but the newly released 2013 Street Design Manual demonstrates how the street in front of your doorstep can be transformed into a place that fosters social interactions and supports wildlife.

Energy storage is the Holy Grail for renewable energy producers. In an ideal world, they would be able to capture that burst of wind at two in the morning and use it to power your coffee maker when you wake up at seven.

Though the 2012 Olympic Games have come to a close, the landscape of London’s East End has been dramatically transformed for the long-term utilizing a ecologically-based design approach that has much in common with the Freshkills Park master plan.

According to The Dirt, nearly 250 acres of formerly-industrial land were turned into a beautiful setting for the Olympic venues inspired by Victorian and post-war English pleasure and festival gardens.

After the success of The Highline in New York, it seems that every city is now attempting to transform abandoned or underused public spaces into lush urban parks. Treehugger has reported on the recent developments in unusually located parks, the latest being the Klyde Warren Park in Dallas, Texas.

The City of Seattle is implementing an innovative program to protect their reservoir water supply and create 76 acres of new open space. Seattle Public Utilities (SPU) has already replaced five open reservoirs with underground structures – a system that both improves water quality and provides better security for the water supply – and an additional project is in the works.

The Land Art Generator Initiative (LAGI) will be holding a FREE public event at 105 Water Street, Staten Island on Saturday, July 28th. Visitors will have a chance to preview the site-specific submissions to the 2012 LAGI NYC design competition, while also learning more about the interaction between renewable energy technologies, land art and public art.

An interesting experiment in water pollution management is taking place in the Bronx River estuary near Hunts Point in New York City. Scientists are testing the use of a ‘Mussel Raft’ for addressing nitrogen pollution from treated sewage that ends up in the water from a nearby treatment facility.

A new method for lighting spaces adjacent to urban waterways uses renewable energy powered by water currents. The ‘Light Reeds,’ from New York City-based Pensa, mimic the reeds you might find along creeks or other natural waterways and provide a more ambient light source than harsh street lights.

‘Renewable energy can be beautiful.’ That is the tagline for the 2012 Land Art Generator Initiative (LAGI)  international design competition. The open LAGI competition calls for ideas to “design a site-specific public artwork that also functions as clean energy infrastructure for New York City.”

Mayor Bloomberg and several City of New York agencies recently released The Wetland Strategy report, which outlines plans to protect and improve city waterways. The report contains strategies to address goals in PlaNYC 2030. Among the 12 initiatives are plans to:

• invest $48 million in projects that restore and enhance nearly 127 acres of wetlands and neighboring areas,
• add 75 acres of wetland to the New York City Parks system,
• create the natural areas conservancy to encourage a public-private partnership for wetlands management,
• create a wetlands mitigation banking or in-lieu fee mechanism for public projects.

In an attempt to draw attention to the dearth of greenspace and poor air quality in the region, the nonprofit VerdMX has constructed three ecostructures throughout Mexico City. One such structure is a vertical garden of over 50,000 plants.

Formerly notorious for its poor air quality, Mexico City is now an example of successful campaigns by policy makers, environmentalists, and various other groups to improve the city’s air.

The Land Art Generator Initiative (LAGI) team recently announced the release of their Field Guide to Renewable Energy Technologies, a free resource they hope will prove useful to “all designers, homeowners, urban planners, students, artists, architects, landscape architects, engineers, and anyone else interested in a clean energy future”.

Earlier this month, the 2012 Land Art Generator Initiative (LAGI) ideas competition, in partnership with New York City’s Department of Parks & Recreation, opened with a call for large-scale artwork proposals with the ability to generate renewable energy for New York City.