Greenwich South Visioning

In Urban Design

Greenwich South Visioning transforms an area of Lower Manhattan that lacks a distinctive character into an iconic district. As an urban “island,” the given site is repurposed through two distinct phases to become a binder between districts as well as a neighborhood in its own right.

Posted: Sep 7th, 2011 / Last Edited: Sep 8th, 2011 Print

Description

Volume, Not Surface
Greenwich South Visioning transforms an area of Lower Manhattan that lacks a distinctive character into an iconic district. As an urban “island,” the given site is repurposed through two distinct phases to become a binder between districts as well as a neighborhood in its own right.

In the first phase, a raised park straddles the ten-lane highway that descends to the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, reconnecting the financial district of Wall Street, to the east, to the Battery Park City area of Lower Manhattan, to the west.

In the second phase, Manhattan’s historic connection to its water’s edge is explored, using the site as a historic marker of Battery Park’s changing shoreline, one that tells a story of Manhattan’s development. As it redefines Battery Park’s southern tip, the thickened park, embedded with various types of programs and myriad connections, extends north into the new district of residential and commercial towers to create the cohesive neighborhood of Battery Park North.

This proposal assumes that no preexisting condition be considered fixed or permanent. Without the restriction of preserving or “working around” found objects, inconvenient edge conditions are reworked or disbanded, while historical lines of reference (datums) are once again strengthened or revealed. Employing volume rather than surface, we reconnect the site, isolated urbanistically by an entanglement of streets and tunnels, to its neighbors, pro- viding the linchpin to an exciting, sustainable, and successful urban area.

Greenwich South Visioning
Volume, Not Surface
Greenwich South Visioning transforms an area of Lower Manhattan that lacks a distinctive character into an iconic district. As an urban “island,” the given site is repurposed through two distinct phases to become a binder between districts as well as a neighborhood in its own right.

In the first phase, a raised park straddles the ten-lane highway that descends to the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, reconnecting the financial district of Wall Street, to the east, to the Battery Park City area of Lower Manhattan, to the west.

In the second phase, Manhattan’s historic connection to its water’s edge is explored, using the site as a historic marker of Battery Park’s changing shoreline, one that tells a story of Manhattan’s development. As it redefines Battery Park’s southern tip, the thickened park, embedded with various types of programs and myriad connections, extends north into the new district of residential and commercial towers to create the cohesive neighborhood of Battery Park North.

This proposal assumes that no preexisting condition be considered fixed or permanent. Without the restriction of preserving or “working around” found objects, inconvenient edge conditions are reworked or disbanded, while historical lines of reference (datums) are once again strengthened or revealed. Employing volume rather than surface, we reconnect the site, isolated urbanistically by an entanglement of streets and tunnels, to its neighbors, pro- viding the linchpin to an exciting, sustainable, and successful urban area.

Greenwich South Visioning
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