Tags: events

We really enjoyed last Friday’s tour of the green roof atop the Parks Department’s Five Borough Technical Services Complex.  The roof is gorgeous and inspiring, and it’s worth checking out our flickr photos (and videos) of the tour if you weren’t able to make it. 

This Saturday is the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance’s City of Water Day, a festival celebrating the potential of the City’s waterfront.  There will be plenty of free entertainment, education and activities, including boat tours, local bands, award-winning food vendors and lots of special children’s events.

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.

Next Friday, we’ll be taking a field trip to visit the green roof at the Parks Department’s Five Borough Technical Services Complex on Randall’s Island.  This is no ordinary green roof–it’s the fourth largest in New York City (at over 15,000 sq ft) and uses 13 different green roof systems.  

We had a great time co-hosting Tuesday night’s panel discussion on public art with the Council on the Arts & Humanities for Staten Island (COAHSI).  All of the panelists make exciting and engaging work, and they had a lot to say about the ways in which financing, permissions and public interaction have played into their work (or the work they curate). 

Last Saturday’s downpour didn’t faze the hardy group of about 30 that came out to hear Robin Nagle’s talk on top of North Mound at the Freshkills Park site.  Our coming together “not in protest but in appreciation” for what was buried beneath our feet, in spite of the rain, was strong foundation for Robin’s claim that we can love a landfill. 

One of the panelists at next Tuesday evening’s panel discussion on public art, The Challenges and Channels of Public Art Production, is Mierle Ukeles, who is the Department of Sanitation’s Artist-in-Residence and contributed to the Freshkills Park master planning process as a Percent for Art artist. 

Monday evening, we’ll be holding a public hearing on the Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (DSEIS) for the roads system that is to connect across Freshkills Park.  The Supplemental EIS is a document that analyzes the potential environmental impacts of the proposed road alignment, construction and phasing, particularly in the East Park section of Freshkills Park, as well as the impacts of alternatives to the proposed alignment.  

The upcoming week is a busy one for us.  Three terrific public events focused on different aspects of the Freshkills Park site: waste, art and ecology.  They’re all free, and we hope to see you at one or more of them. 

Free Bike Fridays continue at Governors Island this summer.  Friday visitors can borrow a free bike from Bike and Roll for up to an hour (beyond that timespan, we’re talking rentals); you can also bring your own bike.  The entire two-mile waterfront promenade of the island is open, contributing to a total of five miles of car-free cycling.

We get a lot of raised eyebrows when we first talk about the Freshkills Park Project with the uninitiated.  Some folks are put off by the idea of landfills in general, and some are familiar with the stigma the site has given Staten Island over the past half century.

For the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s arrival at Manahatta Island, the Wildlife Conservation Society and ecologist Eric W. Sanderson have prepared the Manahatta Project, a massive GIS-based portrait of the topography and ecology of Manhattan as it was in 1609.

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.  

Another volunteer opportunity on Staten Island, removing invasive weeds, watering and mulching at Ocean Breeze Park this weekend:

Natural Resources Group: Stewardship Day
Ocean Breeze Park
Saturday, May 30, 9 am-2 pm

Sign up is through the Million Trees website, along with more Million Trees volunteer events on Staten Island and throughout the city.

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. 

The 2009 Art by the Ferry Festival on Staten Island kicks off June 6th.  For the first two weekends in June, the Staten Island Creative Community will animate the Staten Island Museum, restaurants, and galleries in the St. George neighborhood with visual arts, crafts, spoken word and performing arts events.

There are still seats available for this Sunday’s 10 am bird-focused bus and walking tour of the Freshkills Park site.  Our bird tours are held bimonthly and are jointly led by park planners from our office and naturalists from the Staten Island Museum. 

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.

We had a great turnout for last Saturday’s reading atop North Mound at the Freshkills Park site, presented by grass-roots dialogue and performance project Staten Island OutLOUD.  Attendees read aloud and listened to a passage from ‘Days Afield on Staten Island’, a lyrical exploration of Staten Island’s landscape by 19th century naturalist William T.