Tags: New York City

Marketing and design agency MSLK is mounting a large-scale installation called Take-Less using hundreds of take-out containers as part of the Figment art festival on Governor’s Island in June.  Latching onto the statistic that 2629 take-out meals are consumed in the United States every second, the group plans to assemble a large collection of disposable, take-out plasticware into the number 2629 atop a grassy area, reflecting on our constant incidental production of plastic waste. 

Gothamist discovers the Witte Marine Salvage Yard, one of the largest marine scrapyards on the East Coast, along the shore of the Arthur Kill just south of the Freshkills Park site’s West Mound.  It’s a pretty spectacular and much photographed sight to see these rusted heaps—mostly tugboats and cargo ships—half sunken in the Arthur Kill, and the various plant and marine life that has made its home there. 

Tonight at the Center for Architecture, a panel discussion called Is it Architecture?  The Structure in Landscape.

Recent collaborations between architects, artists and landscape architects have begun to blur the boundaries between architecture, art and site. What does it mean to intervene in the environment with these projects?

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/4417679]

The second annual New York City Wildflower Week actually runs for nine days, starting tomorrow, May 1st and running through the end of next weekend.  The various cultural partners involved in organizing Wildflower Week are offering a host of (mostly) free programs all over the City to encourage New Yorkers to learn about, experience and reflect on the sustainability of native plants, particularly. 

The New York Times features a long-term partnership between the National Park Service and the US Army Corps of Engineers to restore the rapidly disappearing salt marsh islands in Jamaica Bay, the 26-square-mile lagoon bordered by Brooklyn and Queens. Now comprising 800 acres altogether, the series of islands in the Bay spanned more than 16,000 acres a century ago.

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/9859255]

The Staten Island Borough President’s office has put together this fun video quiz about Staten Island parks, all viewed from the air.  So much beautiful landscape!  Borough of Parks, indeed.

Piggybacking on last week’s front-page story on comparative waste management strategies in Denmark and the US, the New York Times runs an op-ed by former Department of Sanitation (DSNY) Commissioner Norman Steisel and former DSNY director of policy planning Benjamin Miller on the need for a new set of policy actions and built facilities to manage New York City’s waste more sustainably, locally and cheaply.

The NYC Department of Environmental Protection‘s Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant is already home of some of the most distinctive architecture in the City, the onion-dome digesters designed by Polshek Partnership Architects, as well as a lovely and serene Nature Walk designed by artist George Trakas. 

Garbage on Roosevelt Island—the 147-acre strip of land lying in the East River between Manhattan and Queens—is disposed of through a remarkable system of underground pneumatic tubes that was constructed in 1975.  The Island’s 14,000 residents empty their trash into a series of garbage chutes which are emptied into the pneumatic pipes several times daily, carrying it at 30 miles per hour to a transfer station at the end of the island.

Tomorrow is Earth Day, and Mayor Bloomberg is expected to sign new legislation into action that will substantially update New York City’s recycling program for the first time since 1989.  The biggest addition to the program will be the Department of Sanitation‘s (DSNY) eventual capacity to recycle all rigid plastic containers, including those used to hold laundry detergent, motor oil and yogurt. 

Through an agreement with the State, the City of New York now has sole custody of  Governor’s Island and has released its park and public space master plan for the $220 million redevelopment of the 172-acre site.  The tantalizing plan has been prepared by Dutch urban design and landscape architecture firm West 8 in partnership with Rogers Marvel Architects, Diller, Scofidio + Renfro, SMWM and Urban Design+ and features a 2.2 mile waterfront promenade, picnic and event lawns, a grove of trees hung with hammocks, man-made marshes and steep, artificial hills that will help to create dramatic overlooks and vistas of lower Manhattan. 

Scientists at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden (BBG) recently completed a 20-year comprehensive study of plant biodiversity in metropolitan New York.  The impressive New York Metropolitan Flora project has cataloged plant populations in every county within a 50-mile radius of New York City. 

A new, 16,000 square foot skate park is now under construction near the 1964 World’s Fair site in Flushing Meadows Corona Park.  In a subtle nod to the mash-up of architectural styles typical of many historic World’s Fairs, the course will feature elements inspired by popular street skating spots around New York City:

• Original Brooklyn Banks 9-stair replica rail
• Union Square rail/steps
• Police Plaza 7-stair rail/various stairs
• Ziegfeld ledge
• Chrystie Park ledge
• Exchange Place street gap
• JFK Banks
• Con Ed Banks
• Pyramid ledges
• Flushing Meadows Park ledge-over-the-grate replica
• Various rails in public parks and the aesthetics of many of the spots in Brooklyn

The course is being built in advance of the Maloof Money Cup, a skate competition that will be held June 5th and 6th; the competiion donated the course through the Parks Department’s Adopt-a-Park program.

The Freshkills Park Talks lecture series continues on Tuesday with a talk and slideshow by  Nathan Kensinger, a photographer and filmmaker whose work focuses on the abandoned and post-industrial edges of New York City.  He’ll be sharing stories of sites along the Gowanus Canal, inside the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and at Fresh Kills, among others, while walking us through his beautiful images.

Rising Currents: Projects for New York’s Waterfront opens today at the MoMA.  The exhibit features architectural proposals transforming New York City’s harbor and coastline in response to sea level rise.  Last fall’s architects-in-residence program at P.S.1 brought together five interdisciplinary teams to produce plans, models, drawings and analytical models that now make up the show.

Pier 1 is the first of Brooklyn Bridge Park’s six pier-to-park segments to open.  This segment really emphasizes the park’s views of Lower Manhattan as a primary asset: key features include a series of newly constructed rolling hills, a massive staircase (made of of granite reclaimed from the demolition of the Roosevelt Island Bridge), several lawns, a 1,300-foot waterfront promenade and a small playground. 

Now that the City of New York has decided to make the pedestrian plazas in Times Square permanent, the New York City Department of Transportation (DOT), in partnership with the Times Square Alliance, has issued a Request for Proposals for conceptual designs of short-term “refreshes” of the plazas. 

The EPA has named Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal a federal Superfund site, thus identifying it as one of “the most complex, uncontrolled or abandoned hazardous waste sites in the country” and making it a target for a comprehensive clean-up process.  The agency estimates that clean-up will last 10 to 12 years and cost between $300 million and $500 million, with funding to draw from parties responsible for the canal’s contamination (so far, the City of New York, the US Navy and seven private companies including Consolidated Edison and National Grid have been identified as potentially responsible). 

Fresh Kills Landfill Percent for Art artist Mierle Ukeles will be moderating a panel discussion on “engaging the environment” through artistic practice, with Winter Workspace Artists Susan Benarcik, Eve Mosher and Anne Katrin Spiess, Sunday at Wave Hill in the Bronx. 

The New York Public Library (NYPL) has unveiled a beta version of their map rectifier tool, a feature that allows users to digitally align or “rectify” historical maps from the NYPL collection with today’s maps and aerial photos.  You can browse previously rectified maps or sign up for an account to align your own and add it to the browse-able archive.