Tags: New York City

Thanks to all who joined our field trip last Friday, and especially to Tim and Heather at the Greenbelt Native Plant Center for so graciously guiding us through all that the Center does.  They gave us a history of the site (which was formerly the Mohlenoff family farm, itself a storied place) and its operations, explained their Foundation Seed production, soil preparation, seed cleaning, storage and banking, as well as greenhouse operations. 

Urban Omnibus runs a feature on Brooklyn’s Floyd Bennett Field, a former civilian and military airport on the Jamaica Bay coast that became parkland in 1971.  The story’s contributing writer, a landscape architect, suggests that the site’s post-urban/natural hybrid landscape prefigured contemporary aesthetics in post-industrial redevelopment, and the range of activities it hosts help to reposition the idea of recreation, making the park a model for other sites in the City.

The New York City Waterfront Vision and Enhancement Strategy (WAVES) is a citywide initiative, begun in January, to update the 1992 comprehensive plan for the development and preservation of the City’s 578 miles of shoreline.  There are two components of the initiative: the physical plan (Vision 2020: The NYC Comprehensive Waterfront Plan) the generation of which is being shepherded by the Department of City Planning (DCP), will focus on creating long-term guidelines for land-use along the waterfront; the Waterfront Action Agenda, a set of high-priority initiatives unfolding over the next three years, will be generated by a group of stakeholders and agencies led by the City’s Economic Development Corporation.

Through July 5th, New Yorkers are invited to play any of the 60 donated and artist-decorated pianos that have recently appeared in public locations across the city.  Play Me, I’m Yours is the brainchild of British artist Luke Jerram, who has promoted and managed the project since its inception in 2008 and has since placed pianos in cities all over the world.  

Artist Stephen Vitiello‘s multi-channel sound installation A Bell For Every Minute is a site-specific sound installation on the High Line, in the semi-enclosed passage that runs between West 13th and 14th Streets. It opened to the public yesterday, June 23rd.

Just two days after Connie Fishman’s talk about Hudson River Park in our Freshkills Park Talks lecture series, the Design Trust for Public Space is holding one of their Public Space Potlucks in Hudson River Park.  This is a series of potluck dinners in urban spaces aimed at encouraging discussion about and communal use of public spaces throughout the City. 

Our Freshkills Park Talks lecture series continues this coming Tuesday with a presentation by Connie Fishman, President of the Hudson River Park Trust (HRPT).  Since 1999, HRPT has overseen the planning, construction, management and operation of Hudson River Park, which spans 550 acres—including portions of the River—along the west side of Manhattan, from Battery Park to 59th St. 

We’re taking another field trip!  The afternoon of Friday, June 25th, members of the Freshkills Park development team will be taking a guided tour of the Park Department’s Greenbelt Native Plant Center (GNPC) on Staten Island.  And you’re invited.

The GNPC is a 13-acre greenhouse, nursery and seed-bank complex specializing in the collection, cultivation and production of native plant material for the use of habitat restoration within New York City.

PBS Thirteen’s Sunday Arts program profiles Materials for the Arts (MFTA), the amazing and popular New York City materials reuse program. Founded in 1978 and still growing under the aegis of the City’s Department of Cultural Affairs, MFTA negotiates the transfer of hundreds of tons of materials annually from companies and individuals who no longer need them into the custody of artists and educators citywide who can make use of them. 

The New York City Department of Transportation has announced the winner of its reNEWable Times Square design competition, aimed to temporarily “refresh and revive” the streetscape of newly pedestrianized Times Square while plans for permanent reconstruction proceed (construction is slated for 1012). 

Quick on the heels of the springtime public opening of Pier 1, the Brooklyn Bridge Park Development Corporation opened the Pier 6 section of the new park this past weekend.  The $55 million area features a 1.6-acre playground with a water play space, 21 swings, slides, a 6,000-square-foot sandbox, a marsh garden, a dog run and bikeway and pedestrian promenades. 

We received our beautiful, custom Key to the City yesterday from the folks at Creative Time.  Feeling empowered and ready to open up that hidden door in the Brooklyn Museum.  We also installed and verified the locked box inside the Freshkills Park tour bus. 

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) recently released a draft of its plan for a new direction in waste management, “Beyond Waste: A Sustainable Materials Management Strategy for New York.”  The plan aims to shift the state’s waste management focus from the end of the waste chain closer to the beginning, more emphatically supporting waste reduction, reuse and recycling. 

The fifth annual Staten Island Film Festival starts tomorrow and features a slate of dozens of intriguing short and feature-length films, many of them about or featuring New York City’s outer boroughs.  Participating filmmakers include 15 from Staten Island (including Wu-Tang Clan leader the RZA) as well as many more from throughout New York City and as far afield as Las Vegas and Australia. 

The Center for Urban Pedagogy‘s (CUP) playful and informative 2006 video The Water Underground is now available in full online at Places.  The 24-minute piece examines and explores New York City’s water supply, treatment and waste infrastructure, its history and prevailing controversies—the students interviewed engineers, plant superintendents, construction workers, marine biologists, urban divers, educators, and environmental justice advocates. 

Working with public art commissioning organization Creative Time, artist Paul Ramírez Jonas has assembled a project called Key to the City that will be taking place throughout New York City this summer.  35,000 specially crafted keys will be given away at daily ‘bestowal ceremonies’ at a kiosk in Times Square from June 3rd to 27th.  

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/11804927]

The excellent “Fast Trash” exhibit—featuring Roosevelt Island‘s signature pneumatic vacuum tube garbage disposal system—closed this past weekend.  A series of public programs including screenings, walking tours and even musical theater helped to make the exhibit, curated by architect Juliette Spertus, into a real must-see. 

This coming Tuesday, we’re happy to have photographer Nathan Kensinger joining us for a Staten-Island-centered follow-up to his March talk and slideshow on New York’s post-industrial waterfront.   Nathan will be presenting photos from around Staten Island, including an abandoned chewing gum factory, a partially demolished color works, rotting train stations, empty hospitals and boat graveyards.

The “Fast Trash” exhibit is a gift that keeps on giving: two excellent organizations are holding awesome-sounding garbage-focused events at Gallery RIVAA on Roosevelt Island this weekend, piggybacking on the last week of “Fast Trash”‘s run.  On Saturday, May 15th, the Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP) will screen two documentaries on New York City waste disposal: the rare and intriguing-sounding 1979 documentary Collection and Disposal, a Job for the Birds, and CUP’s own 2002 Garbage Problems.

The Architectural League of New York has just mounted an exhibit called ‘The City We Imagined/The City We Made: New New York 2001-2010‘ about architecture, planning, and development in New York City since 2001.

This installment chronicles the transformation the physical city in light of the convergence of an array of powerful forces: the events of 9/11, the policies and priorities of the Bloomberg Administration, the volatility of global and local economies, advances in material and construction technologies, and a new interest among the public in contemporary architecture.