PROJECT TITLE:Hunters Point South Waterfront Park and Infrastructure

PROJECT LOCATION:Hunters Point, Queens, New York

PROJECT TYPE:Urban Design, Landscape Architecture, Urban Green Infrastructure

PROJECT PROFESSIONAL ROLE:I served as the overall project design lead on this project from Master Planning phases through Phase 1 Design and Construction completion. My role included serving as the principal project convener on all design related matters between Thomas Balsley Assciates (design lead), Weiss Manfredi (co-designer), and ARUP (prime, infrastructural lead). I co-authored the design and served as the design team lead, translating all design concepts into both illustrative and technical packages. I lead all public outreach and secured all public design approvals for the overall phase 1 and phase 2 projects.

PROJECT STATEMENT:One of city’s most ambitious and complex developments in decades, Hunters Point South aspires to be a new kind of waterfront rede-velopment project. This project focused on designing a park, streetscape, and infrastructural system that was innovative, flexible, and able to inspire the neighborhood while serving as a model for future City projects. The interdisciplinary nature of the project forced tradi-tional roles of the core design team to expand, bluring the lines between landscape architecture, architecture and engineering.

PROJECT NARATIVE:

Significance

Hunters Point South is a 30-acre site located along New York City’s East River in the Hunters Point neighborhood of Long Island City, Queens. In late 2006 Mayor Bloomberg announced the City’s intention to acquire the site -- once envisioned as part of the Queens West plan -- from the Port Authority and the State of New York for the purpose of creating 5,000 residential units, 60 percent of which is intended to target middle income households. To balance the massive new housing project the City sponsored a major open space and infrastructure project that included the design and development of an iconic waterfront park, streetscape development, and a public school.One of the most ambitious, complex, and multi-faceted projects undertaken by the City of New York in decades the project has been envisioned as an international model of urban ecology and a laboratory for innovative sustainable thinking. From the onset the goal has been to create a vibrant, sustainable, multi-generational, multi-cultural community and waterfront park on this forgotten stretch of America’s most culturally diverse county. This challenge inspired the design team to move beyond traditional boundaries of discipline to develop viable solutions that could be implemented within the sites physical and social context.

Culture and Environment

The site is one of great paradoxes and many moods. Surrounded by water on three sides, and adjacent to an established art com-munity of more than 15 significant cultural institutions and 5,000 individual studios, this post-industrial waterfront is separated from Manhattan by the slender band of the East River. The site has evolved from a historic tidal wetland with a soft shoreline, to a drained landfill with an armored edge. Hunters Point South is characterized by an irregular aqueous edge and series of upland visual transects which break the park into unique districts. It’s industrial identity reflects its strategic proximity to waterfront and rail exchange, eliminat-ing all signs of its early ecologically rich history. Today, this legacy presents a paradox; industrial remnants and steep bluffs descend to a beach of decaying piers overlooking the Manhattan skyline.

Transportation + Infrastructure

Connections are critical with any urban regeneration project and this project is exceptionally well connected. Served by a multitude of public transportation systems including ferry, subway, commuter rail, bus routes, and greenways this development will have the ability to accommodate incredibly high density relative to the physical size of the development.

Urban waterfront redevelopment projects in most postindustrial cities are inherently complex. Some sites however accumulate greater complexity then others due to macro-industrial functions. Through an episodic history of infrastructural interventions and land reclama-tions, the Hunters Point South site will have to gracefully accommodate its infrastructural obligations to the city as a whole, engaging in jurisdictions that extend well beyond the site boundaries, while inspiring visitors and future residents.

Sustainable Initiatives

Numerous alternative futures for the site design were considered during the team’s extensive dialogue with the public and most major New York City and State regulatory agencies. The collaborative process with public agencies resulted in a spatial design that reflects a new urban ecological paradigm; combining numerous green initiatives and high-performance guidelines that target the City’s sustain-ability goals. Localized storm water treatment cells within both the streetscape and park – a first in for New York City -- the wide spread use of low-impact materials, porous pavements, expanded root zones for tree health, wetland restoration, re-creation of long-lost habi-tats, and electric generation robust enough to fulfill the park needs, enable the project to achieve big picture planning goals.

The Site Design

With significant nearby concentrations of young children, seniors, and a new generation of young professionals and artists; active, pas-sive, and eco-exploratory uses have been proposed for the public realm. Employing a design strategy that also drew inspiration from the diverse maritime ecologies that historically thrived on the site, select ecologies were repurposed and reinterpreted to create a series of parallel perimeter ecologies that link the northern, more active zones of the project to the southern, more restful areas, and the site

to the water, creating rich new ecotones. These linear strands form new ecological corridors which run parallel and cross grain to the water’s edge, providing multiple systems of interpretive paths that link the major precincts and programs of the park and upland pre-cinct. Along the southern waterfront, existing armored edges have been strategically replaced by new inter-tidal wetlands. Integrated with a system of paths, the pervious breakwater creates an infrastructural “soft” edge that allows the site to interact with the river for the first time in the last 100 years. The intersection between the city and the park along the eastern edge is defined by a richly planted bio-swale that processes and cleanses storm run-off before it is discharged into the rivers. The park’s irregular perimeter varies widely from slender to broad widths of land, calibrating the scale of the program elements throughout the park.

A new multi-use green oval occupies the widest part of the northern site offering views directly across the river to Manhattan. This green anchors the park’s north precinct and is framed by a continuous path and hybrid structure that is simultaneously architectural interven-tion and green infrastructure. Clad with a reflective pleated steel skin that registers the subtle hues of the native plantings, the deeply pleated shade canopy supports photovoltaic panels, registered at the optimal angle. These same grooves perform double duty as they are deep enough to transport rainwater to the bio-swale.

The primary walkway that surrounds the green unfurls to a cantilevered overlook at the southern margin of the site that is suspended over a new wetland at the water’s edge, viewing the Manhattan skyline beyond. From this central path, slender paths extend into off route extensions to the water’s edge, connecting new wetlands and habitats for avian and aquatic species. These elements, along with spectacular views, provide a new landmark and destination to bring the community to the waterfront.

The site is a glorious setting to capture and explore the shifting spectacle of river and city. The innovative and integrated design cre-ates a new sustainable strategy that weaves infrastructure, landscape and architecture, bringing the city to the park and the park to the waterfront.