Tags: Freshkills Park

[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.  

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. 

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. 

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

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.

On Saturday, we woke up REALLY early to take a group of professional photographers out on a tour of the Freshkills Park site and catch some prime morning light.  What we got was morning fog, at least for half the morning, but our pros still shot some interesting stuff. 

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.

Our judges have voted, and the winners of the Freshkills Park haiku contest are:

Adult winners:

Seen from outer space
Freshkills undergoing change
Refresh Google Earth

-L

a park in my mind
landfill scarred islanders’ hearts
reclaimed, restored land

-Lindsay Campbell

From trash to treasure
As from rubble to ramble
We grow; we evolve

-Jessica Kratz

Youth winner:

30 Years

The fresh air, boat rides
On the swings, flying your kite
30 years be there

-Shade, Esmeralda, Alexus

Congratulations!  

Today marks the end of the Freshkills Park Haiku contest. Thanks to everyone who shared their thoughts and inspirations of the Park by crafting a haiku. Reading the entries–over 100 of them!–was a blast, and we are looking forward to announcing the winners on Monday. 

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. 

This Saturday, Staten Island OutLOUD, a community dialogue and performance project, will be reading from the naturalist memoir Days Afield atop North Mound at the Freshkills Park site.  Days Afield, written in 1892, is a poetic exploration of Staten Island’s natural resources by naturalist, historian and Staten Island native William T.

Spring marks the beginning of the Freshkills Park tour season.  The tours are a chance to share the vision of Freshkills Park with the public and sometimes a prompt for the public to share its thoughts about the site with us. 

The Freshkills Park Talks series continues this Thursday with a talk by Ed Toth, Director of the Parks Department’s Greenbelt Native Plant Center.  The GNPC’s mission is to supply New York City’s natural areas with native plants and seeds from local plant populations. 

Good news from Albany: after some early scares, $222 million dollars has been allotted this year to continue the work of the Environmental Protection Fund (EPF).  This money will ensure that state programs at zoos, botanical gardens, municipal parks, farmland and other natural areas remain intact. 

To celebrate National Poetry Month this April, we’re inviting folks to share ideas, impressions, experiences, and thoughts of Freshkills Park – in Haiku form.  A Haiku is a type of poem written in three lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables, for a total of 17 syllables:

Soft fields green expanse
Undulating horizon
Gleaming rivers meet

Prizes will be awarded to the top three winners. 

Did we mention that we are trying to develop a research and development agenda for Freshkills Park?  Park development over the next several years will only be able to open up about 100 acres of the 2,200-acre site to the public.

Nearly a third of the nation’s 800 bird species are endangered, threatened or in significant decline due to habitat loss, invasive species and other threats, according to a recent report from the Department of Interior.  Birds have been getting a bad rep recently, particularly because of the role of Canada geese in the Flight 1549 incident. 

Just found this on Where: a critical response to the Freshkills Park plan prompted by last November’s New York Magazine feature.  The thrust of the critique is that the Field Operations’ design of Freshkills Park will create a landscape that can be falsely “consumed without guilt:”

All the capping and veiling and the sealing tight are carried out not only to elude dealing with material run-off of the waste, but also to distract from what that waste means and implies and reflects (the architects and the city want to avoid any leaks, physical or moral).

Forty years have passed since Mierle Ukeles wrote her Manifesto for Maintenance Art, 1969!, which launched her trajectory as the premier maintenance artist in the world and ultimately led to her selection as the Percent for Art artist selected to contributed to the Freshkills Park master plan. 

The spring conference of the Forum for Urban Design is called The 21^st Century Park & the Contemporary City.  The first evening’s panel is free, and there will be some big name landscape architects on it: Ken Greenberg, George Hargreaves, Michael Van Valkenburgh and James Corner, principal of Field Operations, who are designing Freshkills Park as well as the High Line.