Tags: design
AMD&ART Park
Another poster child for the reclamation of disturbed lands: AMD&ART Park in Vintondale, PA. By the mid-’90s, coal mining in this part of Appalachia had resulted in severe acid mine drainage (AMD) into waterways and general public resignation to a major environmental hazard.
...MOREQueens Plaza renovation has begun
The WRT/Marpillero Pollak-designed infrastructure and public space project that we wrote about in June has broken ground in Long Island City, Queens.
...MORERaising the green roof
There are exciting green roof projects emerging all over New York City these days: the experimental setups at the Parks Five Borough facility that we visited last month; The US Postal Service’s brand new 2.4-acre installation of native, drought-resistant plants–reportedly the largest green roof in the country–atop their Manhattan mail processing facility; the green roof farm in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, which has been hosting volunteers and giving lectures since opening this spring.
...MORENYC participatory park design
People Make Parks is a joint effort of Partnerships for Parks and the Hester Street Collaborative that aims to involve ordinary citizens in the design of public parks. The project helps citizens compile local knowledge to develop a vision for a park, educates them about the capital development process for building or renovating a park and helps connect them and their vision to the Department of Parks & Recreation at opportune moments in that process.
...MOREGradual greening of recreation design
There are a handful of skate parks built from recycled materials these days, but generally, these massive concrete installations have been as environmentally friendly as golf courses. The Ed Benedict Skate Park in Portland, Oregon is trying to revise that image by managing storm water run-off more responsibly, absorbing it through integrated ‘biofiltration islands’ that have been incorporated as design elements.
...MOREDesign solutions for energy addiction
Metropolis Magazine‘s 2009 Next Generation design competition asked entrants to “fix our energy addiction” at any scale and through any design specialty. From 197 entries, the winner was a proposal to integrate wind turbines into existing power transmission towers.
...MOREThoughts on Queens Plaza and infrastructure
Urban Omnibus interviews designers Margie Ruddick, Sandro Marpillero and Linda Pollak about the Queens Plaza Bicycle and Pedestrian Landscape Improvement Project. Some good discussion about the potential of the urban park, salvaging industrial history in the making of green spaces and the question of “How can something hard, urban and harsh operate ecologically?”
...MOREWPA 2.0 Design Competition
CityLAB, part of UCLA’s Department of Architecture and Urban Design, is conducting an open design competition, WPA 2.0: Working Public Architecture, calling for “innovative, implementable proposals to place infrastructure at the heart of rebuilding our cities during this next era of metropolitan recovery.”
...MOREGaia Institute manages stormwater in Hunt’s Point
The Hugo Neu Metals Recycling Facility, in the Hunt’s Point area of the Bronx, is getting a stormwater management makeover. The Gaia Institute’s new system for the 6.5-acre facility recycles stormwater that would otherwise run off into the Bronx River Estuary.
...MOREBeautifying power capture
Integrating solar and wind power capture into natural and urban environments isn’t just a technical or engineering task–it’s also a design opportunity. Some recent eye-popping ideas have ranged from a dragonfly-shaped urban farm on Roosevelt Island to a snakeskin-like PV-tiled stadium in Taiwan.
...MOREField Operations on Designing Freshkills Park
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.
...MORETonight! Freshkills Park Talk
Just a reminder about this evening’s talk at the Staten Island Museum. Jerome Chou and Grace Tang from landscape architecture and urban design firm Field Operations will be discussing the ideas behind the design of Freshkills Park and their work on upcoming projects.
...MORE21st Century Parks conference recap
The Forum for Urban Design’s 21stCentury Park & the Contemporary City conference ended yesterday. Wednesday’s panel of brand-name landscape architects included James Corner, George Hargreaves, and Michael Van Valkenburgh and focused on the need to renew post-industrial landscapes and brownfields as opportunities for creating new parks.
...MORENext Freshkills Park talk: Designing Freshkills Park, Thursday May 28
The Freshkills Park Talks series continues this month with Jerome Chou and Grace Tang from landscape architecture and urban design firm Field Operations. They’ll be discussing the ideas behind the Freshkills Park design and the process of transforming a landfill into a 21st century park, including their work on projects scheduled for construction over the next two years.
...MOREEcological Urbanism Conference, podcasted
Harvard’s Graduate School of Design hosted a conference in March called Ecological Urbanism: Alternative and Sustainable Cities of the Future. Podcasts of talks included in the conference are available for streaming. Sessions focused on sustainable urbanism, what that means or might look like, and how on earth might we accomplish such a daunting task.
...MORETreatment plant to urban playground
Dutch architecture firm Arons en Gelauff has won a design competition to adapt a pair of former sewage treatment silos in Amsterdam into a multi-functional cultural complex. The design tops one of the silos with a splashy, open-rooftop playground and wraps it with a green wall.
...MOREThe future (and present) of NYC e-recycling
Electronic waste contains some pretty dangerous stuff and is best kept out of landfills. Starting in 2010, disposal of electronics with your regular trash will be illegal in New York City, and any resident who throws electronics into their trash will be charged a $100 fine.
...MORENot par for the course
A series of wowzers: the largest green roof in the US! Which doubles as a driving range! And sits atop a water treatment facility! The $2.1 billion dollar Croton Water Filtration Plant in the Bronx was designed by Grimshaw Architects, landscape architect Ken Smith and green roof gurus Rana Creek.
...MORE
