Tags: parks

Here’s great find from our archives: a November 1951 proposal for development at Fresh Kills issued under legendary Parks Commissioner Robert Moses.  The City of New York began filling in Fresh Kills in 1948, initially with the idea of depositing “clean fill” there for three years to make the land developable. 

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. 

Another fun competition: FlyNY, in partnership with the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation, is hosting an international kite design contest. Participants will get to show off their aspiring designs and fly their kites on Saturday, May 9th on Pier I on the Hudson River. 

This awesome 200-hectare public park in Duisburg Nord, Germany was transformed from a coal-fired steel production plant into a giant industrial playground. Latz + Partner’s design emphasized the value of memory: the goal was to create a space former mill workers could explore with their grandchildren and still be able to identify the form and function of the old machinery. 

A series of wowzers: the largest green roof in the US!  Which doubles as a driving range!  And sits atop a water treatment facility!  The $2.1 billion dollar Croton Water Filtration Plant in the Bronx was designed by  Grimshaw Architects, landscape architect Ken Smith and green roof gurus Rana Creek. 

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. 

FIGMENT, the arts organization partnered with the Governor’s Island Preservation and Education Corporation (GIPEC), is building a mini-golf course on Governor’s Island.  And they’re holding  a design competition for single holes, which you can enter.  Governor’s Island is an interesting project and, with FIGMENT, GIPEC has been able to keep the island enviably well programmed. 

Urban Omnibus has posted a terrific project portrait and interview video with artist George Trakas about his Newtown Creek Nature Walk in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.  As a Percent for Art artist, Trakas piggybacked on the Department of Environmental Protection‘s $3 billion upgrade of the wastewater treatment facility to create a handsomely designed waterfront park/plaza where employees and locals can relax. 

From Brazil comes this gorgeous new “eco-park” built on a brownfield–formerly the 130,000-square-foot site of a garbage incinerator.  Davis Brody Bond Architects and Levisky Arquitetos Associados have transformed it into a multi-functional park that celebrates the site’s industrial, cultural and natural heritage. 

In the early 1980s, Cairo was experiencing the developmental crunch of growing population and limited civic resources.  A 1984 study found the green space per capita in Cairo to be roughly equivalent to a human footprint.  In the mid ’90s, the Aga Khan Trust for Culture began construction on Al-Azhar Park on the derelict Darassa site, a 500-year-old, 74-acre mound of rubble located in the heart of the city.

Freshkills Park and landscape architect James Corner, principal of Field Operations, have been featured in a huge story in the current issue of New York Magazine. We’re happy to get this kind of exposure, though the story does seem to incorrectly suggest that when you visit the site you see a heap of trash.