CITATION

“ The City Kids Education Center inspires its young users with tactile textures, natural light, and flowing spaces. Since the building’s program itself is whimsical, it is delightful to see equally fun forms. The fact that the building was originally a lumber warehouse shows the transformational possibilities of adaptive reuse.

Submitted by BKSK Architects, the Battery Playscape is located at the tip of Manhattan where land meets sea, locals meet tourists, and the bustle of the city yields to the presence of nature. Ecologically, the site is a dynamic confluence of water and land, including a partly natural-partly constructed coastline.

Conceived after Hurricane Sandy, the 1-1/2 acre Playscape responds to the site’s past and future flooding by telling the story of resilience, interwoven with play. It is the last piece of the Battery Conservancy’s masterplan which envisioned a verdant future for the then-dilapidated park. The Playscape realizes that vision through accessible, full body play immersed in planting, natural landforms, and visible water management. Opened in 2021, it is built to flood and recover, part of the embedded climate change narrative. The project was a collaboration between architects, landscape designers, and specialty fabricators, as well as a public-private partnership between the Battery Conservancy and the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation.

On the premise that early appreciation for ecological diversity fosters environmental stewardship in adulthood, the Playscape’s five zones are each designed around a landscape typology from the Hudson River Valley. The zones represent ways land and water meet in nature—Bluff, Meadow, Riverbed, Marsh, and Dune. Each typology encourages site specific experiences and play—standing atop the Bluff to view the harbor, looking at the city from houses in the tree canopy, peeking out of grasses in the Meadow or running up and down the Dune. Custom play structures encourage interactivity through tall stone slides, multi-level playhouses, and performance space at the Showbox Theater. The Battery Playscape is a revitalized urban landscape serving as a respite from urban chaos, supporting open-ended play and using the local ecology to teach about resiliency.

The Financial District and Seaport Climate Resilience Master Plan, submitted by ONE Architecture, is a shared city-community vision for a resilient 21st-century waterfront. Grounded in community and regulatory input, climate science, and engineering, the master plan reflects an ambitious vision that can be realized. Lower Manhattan’s waterfront is a unique confluence of urban life and infrastructure where vast transportation networks converge and connect. This waterfront houses maritime facilities that serve the entire region, ships, a heliport, a constellation of public open spaces, amenities, and historic landmarks, and the elevated FDR viaduct. Below grade underground infrastructure includes five subway lines, power transmission lines, and the sewer interceptor. This dense urban fabric leaves limited space to site flood defense without walling off the community. To achieve the objectives requires extending the shoreline of Lower Manhattan into the East River to create space for flood defense infrastructure and waterfront uses. The proposed design envisions a new multi-level public waterfront. The upper level will protect against coastal storms, with buried floodwalls that create elevated open spaces with views of the harbor and city. A lower-level esplanade will be close to the water and connect to piers and ferries. Ferry terminals will be redeveloped into new resilient and modern facilities with room for future expansion. This waterfront will also help advance sustainability goals and identifies opportunities to integrate renewable energy in new buildings or structures along the water. Nature-based solutions will help manage stormwater, provide shade, and reduce local summer temperatures. Finally, this new shoreline edge will incorporate opportunities for ecological enhancements, providing new habitats both on land and in the water.

URBAN PLANNING | DESIGN FINANCIAL DISTRICT AND SEAPORT CLIMATE RESILIENCE MASTER PLAN

NEW YORK, NEW YORK

SUBMITTED BY: ONE ARCHITECTURE

Renderings: © ONE Architecture & SCAPE Landscape Architecture