Tags: events

MillionTreesNYC is seeking volunteers to help plant 20,000 trees at parks throughout the five boroughs this Saturday, October 23rd.  Spots are still available at two sites on Staten Island, Clove Lakes Park and Wolfe’s Pond Park, as well as at Ferry Point Park in the Bronx. 

Sneak Peak was a huge success!  About 1800 people joined us at the Freshkills Park site on Sunday to make and fly kites, canoe in the creeks, walk the site with an expert, ride a pony, pet a goat, make a bag or a birdhouse, learn about composting and recycling and energy efficiency, receive a free bike helmet or fitting, enjoy the fun music, cool crafts and awesome food and generally celebrate the potential of this fascinating and amazing site. 

New York City has seen a surge in recreational access to urban waterways over the last 15 years.  There are active canoeing and kayaking outings in the Hudson River, the Bronx River, Jamaica Bay, even Superfund sites like the Gowanus Canal and the Newtown Creek. 

We’ve been eager to host a kite-flying event at the Freshkills Park site since the very beginning of this project.  The grassy, open landfill mounds soar above the surrounding landscape, not only making them high points with incredible views, but also providing access to some prime wind conditions. 

One of the things we’ve learned over the course of this park project is that the Freshkills Park site has been a part of many, many people’s careers: Sanitation workers, engineers, equipment manufacturers, scientists, policymakers, designers, artists, philanthropists—we are constantly astonished to discover a new realm of expertise on this site with which we’re so familiar. 

We’re thrilled to be able to exhibit Mierle Laderman Ukeles‘ work The Social Mirror at Sneak Peak this Sunday!  The piece is a 12-ton, 28-foot long 1979 Department of Sanitation collection truck outfitted in mirror glass.  It made its debut in the 1983 New York City Art Parade and was last publicly exhibited at the 2007 Armory Show.

This week we’re featuring some of the awesome offerings we’ll have on hand at this coming Sunday’s Sneak Peak at Freshkills Park.  First up: The King of Falafel & Shawarma, Fares “Freddy” Zeidais.  Freddy’s already high stock rose even more this past weekend, when he WON THE VENDY CUP at the 2010 Vendy Awards on Governor’s Island (the annual street vendor awards ceremony held by the Street Vendor Project of the Urban Justice Center)! 

Landscapes with the Fall of Icarus is a two-week performance installation by artist Paul Lloyd Sargent for the the Mobile Literacy + Art Bus (MLAB), a collaborative project of art and architecture students at Syracuse University. From 2007 to 2008, the team converted a 1984 Recreational Vehicle into a mobile classroom, digital photo lab, gallery space, and community center for use by the Syracuse City School District and the greater Syracuse Community. 

We’ve been hard at work putting together the first open, public event EVER at the Freshkills Park site, which will take place Sunday, October 3rd!  ‘Sneak Peak at Freshkills Park‘ will not only be a chance to see the site’s hills and wetlands in all their autumn glory, it will also be a hybrid kite festival/street fair/series of special site tours! 

The Farm City Fair is a festival taking place over three weekends at various Brooklyn sites to celebrate and build knowledge about current practices in urban agriculture.  Farmers, artists and urban planners will be on hand to discuss and present rooftop farm projects, urban homesteading, city beekeeping, parking lot agriculture and more. 

The annual meeting of the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) is in Washington, D.C. this weekend, September 10-13.  The design and planning of Freshkills Park will be presented in one of many ‘Education Sessions’ by Ellen Neises, Associate Principal at James Corner Field Operations, and Tatiana Choulika, FO’s Project Manager for Freshkills Park. 

Open House New York, the weekend look inside what are normally closed doors of New York City’s architectural and design fascinatia, takes place Saturday and Sunday, October 9th and 10th this year.  Volunteers are needed.  Volunteers would assist with the weekend’s many programs, including tours, site-specific performances and discussions. 

Expedition Gowanus is a series of Saturday workshops focused on low-tech, do-it-yourself sustainability practices happening in tandem with an informing the self-sustainable redesign and retrofitting of a houseboat in Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal.  The first workshop will be held Saturday, September 11th and will focus on phytoremediation, the use of plants to draw pollutants out of the surrounding environment. 

Last Friday, we made our second annual visit to Randall’s Island for a field trip to the Department of Parks & Recreation’s Five Borough Technical Services Complex and its incredible green roof.  Chief of Technical Services Artie Rollins gave us a comprehensive overview of the roof’s 20+ green roof systems, including tray systems, bag systems, Xero Flor systems, homemade mixes of soil and perlite, elevated planters, overhead trellises and green walls.  

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/13491802]

The Olmsted Legacy is a one-hour documentary about the contributions of urban planner and landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, visionary designer of many of America’s first great parks.  It features the voices of Kevin Kline and Kerry Washington. 

Such a huge crowd came out to hear Peter Harnik speak in our Freshkills Park Talks/Uncommon Ground joint lecture last week!  We’re grateful to the many attendees, and to Peter, who made the trek up from Washington, D.C. and gave an interesting overview of projects happening nationwide to turn existing spaces within our cities into public parks. 

In the wake of our staff canoe tour last October, we’re now looking to gradually expand access to the glimmering creeks of the Freshkills Park site.  Last Sunday, we organized a kayak tour of the site for representatives of community boathouses throughout the City. 

Artist Tattfoo Tan will lead bike tour of Staten Island community gardens this Saturday, July 24th, hitting Castleton Hill Moravian Church community garden and the Joe Holzka Community Garden. Attendees are encouraged to wear a helmet and bring plenty of water. 

Urban Omnibus recaps (and streams) an Architectural League discussion between Paul Goldberger, architecture critic for The New Yorker, and former NYC Deputy Mayor for Economic Development Dan Doctoroff.  The discussion covers a number of the controversial projects Doctoroff helped initiate before and during his tenure, including the City’s failed 2012 Olympics bid, the West Side Stadium project, the Atlantic Yards and congestion pricing. 

Next Tuesday evening in the Arsenal Gallery, our Freshkills Park Talks lecture series continues with a talk by Peter Harnik, Director of the Center for City Park Excellence at the Trust for Public Land.  He will be speaking to topics from his latest book, “Urban Green: Innovative Parks for Resurgent Cities,” about the reclamation of a variety of urban sites—landfills, railways, rooftops, cemeteries, schoolyards, highway decks—as parkland.