Tags: parks

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. 

Quick on the heels of our terrific if rainy lecture this past Tuesday, we’re thrilled to host another lecture in our Freshkills Park Talks series this upcoming Wednesday evening, May 26th—this time at the Arsenal, on Central Park.  We’ll be joined by Tatiana Choulika, Senior Associate at landscape architecture and urban design firm James Corner Field Operations, who will be presenting and discussing the design for the first phase of the Southern quadrant of Freshkills Park. 

Yes, its official name is Mount Trashmore Park. Virginia Beach is home to one of the earliest conversions of a contemporary sanitary landfill to parkland in the US.  The 165-acre site operated for many years as a landfill for waste originating from all over the east coast. 

[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.

27-acre Stearns Quarry Park opened in 2009 in the Bridgeport neighborhood of Chicago.  The site was used as a limestone quarry from 1833 to 1969 by the Illinois Stone and Lime Company, after which it served as a municipal landfill: from 1969 to 1974, dirt, gravel, brick and construction debris were delivered to the site, filling the hole excavated by mining operations.

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. 

We’re very excited to present our most recent phase of design work, in South Park, tonight at the Jewish Community Center of Staten Island.  The Freshkills Park development team and park designers from James Corner Field Operations will be there to virtually guide the gathered crowd the first phase of South Park, which will host softball fields, hiking and biking paths, play areas, a parking lot and flexible event spaces.

Gas Works Park in Seattle, WA is located on the 19.1-acre site of a former Seattle Gas Light Company coal gasification plant.  The plant opened in 1906 and closed in 1956 when the City switched to natural gas.  The site was abandoned for several years until the City purchased it in 1962; a design combining elements of historic preservation and park design was commissioned from landscape architect Richard Haag in the early 1970s.

As part of its waterfront redevelopment plan, multi-governmental agency Waterfront Toronto is currently in construction of Sherbourne Park, a $28 million storm water treatment facility and public park, near the Lake Ontario shore.  Much of the water treatment infrastructure will be visible to park visitors, making more transparent the purification process through features like an ultraviolet treatment pavilion, dramatic channelizing sculptures and biofiltration beds.

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.

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. 

The National Park Service has launched the Designing the Parks Annual Awards Program, aimed at honoring “the role and significance of public parks in community life and the importance of innovative, responsive, high quality planning and design.”  Awards appear to be purely honorary but intended to boost awareness of and support for the NPS’s key principles of park design:

• Reverence for place
• Engagement of all people
• Expansion beyond traditional boundaries
• Advancement of sustainability
• Informed decision making
• An integrated research, planning, design, and review process

The call for submissions is open to built and publicly open parks throughout the world, administered by all levels of government. 

Mayor Thomas W. Danehy Park in Cambridge, Massachusetts is a 50-acre site with a similar history to the Freshkills Park site: clay deposits onsite attracted brick manufacturing uses in the 19th century; wet, low ground led to landfilling operations in the mid-20th century; local activism and political pressure led to late 20-th century landfill closure and, ultimately, to park construction.

CUNY’s Institute for Sustainable Cities is hosting a four-part series of free public seminars starting this Wednesday, February 24th.  Turning the Tide: New York’s Waterfront in Transition aims to address topics and issues related to the City’s relationship with its coastline and to review its history and future of waterfront development. 

The Brooklyn Bridge Park Development Corporation has released plans for Pier 4, one of six piers along Brooklyn’s northern waterfront that will be incorporated into the in-development Brooklyn Bridge Park.  The Pier 4 site, like the rest of the 85-acre park, has been designed by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, Inc.

James Corner Field Operations (FO) and Perkins+Will have been selected as the lead designers of the Atlanta Beltline, a 22-mile loop of parkland, trails and light rail to encircle the core of the city and revitalize derelict rail easements. 

The City of New York has just released a new publication and policy initiative called Active Design Guidelines: Promoting Physical Activity and Health in Design.  The guidelines, which have been developed through an interagency effort in collaboration with professional and academic institutions, make simple and accessible recommendations about how design of built features in the City can and should address public health concerns related to obesity and physical activity. 

Figment, the participatory public arts project on Governor’s Island, is preparing for its fourth annual summer event and has released its call for art and architecture proposals.  There are three open competitions:

1. Design an individual hole to compose part of an 18-hole mini-golf course.

When we first caught sight of London’s Northala Fields Park, which opened in May 2008, the similarity in topography to Fresh Kills set off instant recognition–this is filled land.  The park’s construction included the creation of four man-made hills filled with construction debris from local projects including the redevelopment of Wembley Stadium and the construction of a nearby shopping center. 

The Freshkills Park Talks lecture series continues on Tuesday with John McLaughlin, Director of Ecological Services for the New York City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP).  John designed and oversees the ecological reclamation of the Pennsylvania and Fountain Avenue landfills, sited along Jamaica Bay in Brooklyn.