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Change the Course: NYC Waterfront Construction Competition 2012 Presented by NYCEDC
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New York City Ancestry Forest [NYCAF] NYC
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Prepared by Christianna Grace Bennett American Architectural and Landscape Designer
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i. Preface
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The New York City waterfront is an ecological keystone situated within a larger, regional ecologic MFN
system. Forested corridors of boreal forest [conifer and alpine forest] and the Adirondack and Catskill Mountains to the north provide important migratory paths from far inland, routes that animals use to connect to the eastern seaboard, in addition to being a drainage basin for the entire watershed [see Fig. 5.3 for further information]. New York City, more specifically Manhattan, also acts as the protective barrier island landscape within the watershed, as it drains out to the Atlantic Ocean. The “New York City Ancestry Forest (NYCAF)” surveys the misunderstood New York waterfront as a dynamic, highly connected and transformative landscape situated amidst the continuing natural and man made renewal cycles of New York. The ephemeral nature of landscape is the view from which this design derives its roots, linking New York to its larger ecological context, both to the northern forests and eastward to the ocean. This approach studies strategies of forests north of the city for preserving land, material integrity, and sustainable building; also taking into account the local, maritime conditions of the East and Hudson Rivers as drivers for a new and unique landscape condition. Maritime Forest Network
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This project views the social environment of New York City as a contemporary anomaly. Calling together people from all walks of life and varying worldviews, the city bears the burden of millions of people hoping to make their mark “on the city” and consequentially on its environment. Through the lens of the culturally-permeable human fascination with ancestry, the proposed forestwetland system will populate itself with plants, especially trees, serving as ancestral markers of those who wish to purchase a plant and decide its location within the proposed landscape. Taking from numerous cultural practices of keeping sacred forests and sacred trees, and also romanticizing the ancient tradition of respecting tree deities, the project will behave as an iconic cultural landscape, a sacred landscape, that will become as valuable as what are now the oldest cultural centers in the city. As the two designed sites, the Lower Manhattan Waterfront and Pier 40, begin to fill with the proposed “spirit trees” belonging to thousands of New York families, new sites will begin being identified and designed in a similar fashion in the future. These will become new projects growing along identified forest and maritime networks, connecting New York to improved ecological bearings, and strengthening both the natural and cultural infrastructures of this irreplaceable American urban phenomenon.
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ii. Thesis
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The NYCAF is a model of an ecological infrastructure system for the waterfront of the City of New York. The project sets a precedent for waterfront locations across the city’s coast for creating a unified landscape condition, is further understood as being connected to and informed by larger existing ecosystems throughout the State of New York, and the east coast. This proposal uses natural and efficient construction knowledge from northern forests and sustainable maritimeF. M. N. landscapes located at similar latitudes to contribute to the protection and growth of New York City, growth that includes, and transcends physical size. New York City is not only and environmental keystone site but a cultural one as well, and the speed at which the physical growth of the city occurs means that cultural legacies and markers are increasingly marginalized as physical manifestations decline in the face of highly permeable digital records. The social and cultural dimensions of the city are coupled with the landscape design, as a community-based feature, to MFN both raise funds and include large numbers of residents in the participation and design of the new environment. Together, the ecological and social agendas of this project aim to revitalize and reestablish the complex and beautiful qualities that New York City holds within its systemic ecological location and its celebrated and rich ancestral history, such that future generations of New Yorkers will feel forever connected to the totality of their urban environment.
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iii. Proposal essay, Change the Course a. Introduction As a New Yorker, you are among the forest people living on this planet. You and your metaphorical “New York ancestors” live – and have lived – in what is deemed the concrete jungle that, long before this strange urban ecology you live in, was previously a massive woodland area. Despite the fact that buildings and roads have replaced the majority of the original woodland ecology made up of trees and streams, New York City still participates in a larger ecology. Manhattan and the boroughs are keystone landmasses connecting northern woodlands in the Canadian boreal and the Adirondack region to the Atlantic Ocean and eastern seaboard.
“Sacred groves are the site of ritual and secret society initiations, a locale where social and political values, morals, secrets, and laws are passed on to the younger generation… The trees within these groves are viewed as sacred trees, housing spirits, and providing links to ancestors. In some areas, sacred groves are the only forested areas that remain.” - taken from Unasylva No. 213 “Perceptions of Forests” a publication by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations This project highlights New York City’s keystone ecological context, and recognizes its’ potential environmental influence in creating the NYCAF to heal the larger ecological framework in which New York City is a keystone. It also seeks to establish a lasting legacy and connection between the city and its inhabitants, allowing for the passing on of values and morals from one generation to the next through ecological stewardship. Just as Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty offer tangible reminders of bold actions of the past, the NYCAF too will be a visible reminder to future New Yorkers that previous actions of their ancestors have left a significant mark on their lives.
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b. Feasibility The waterfront surrounding New York City has recently proven to be simultaneously an engineered, yet delicate infrastructure, and harsh environment. Despite blocks of concrete filled with rebar, massive stonewalls, and decades-old wooden piles “engineered” into specific places, the highly-constructed marine interface is failing. These engineer-driven human interventions within the marine environment were neither designed to last this long, nor were they constructed from the proper materials for seawater exposure. F.
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Soft infrastructure using vegetation and natural ecologies, on the other hand, is a method to protect human land and resources is a proven defense system for coastline inhabitation. In many traditional cultures, natural infrastructure is also a protected and culturally revered “icon” embedded within the folklore, mythology, and language of a given group of people. In these cases, the soft infrastructure is a practical and symbolic element that enriches a MFN MFN community’s perception of the place in which they live. Forests, in particular, are a special ecology to many cultures’ across the world, and are also particularly special to New York City and New York State. With over 6 Million acres, the Adirondack State Park, just north of Manhattan, is recognized as the United States’ largest State park and largest National Historic Landmark, and is a frequent destination for many New Yorkers year-round, and New York City was once a thriving woodland.
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“Man’s external soul is the tree, if the tree is injured, man is injured.” - excerpt from the Egyptian folkloric story, the Tale of Two Brothers. Gathering from the engineering documents provided by New York City Economic Development Corporation [NYCEDC] and their collaborators, it is clear that the repair of many pier structures would require a budget beyond the means of the City of New York. In the face of the most recent disaster, Hurricane Sandy, and with the foresight that future events could be on the horizon, an investment in durable pier structures is necessary. With this in mind and from what is documented in the “Pier 40 Condition Monitoring Inspection Report” and the “East River Bulkhead Fulton Fish Market to Pier 35 Letter Report,” it appears that the constructed elements which are holding up the best are the timber pile elements in comparison to less flexible, less natural materials such as the concrete and granite seawalls and bulkheads. Furthermore, taking the lead from the following exemplary designers and projects: -
Kate Orff, Oystertecture, NYC, MOMA exhibit: Rising Currents Projects for New York Cities Waterfronts Jeanne Gang, Northerly Island, Chicago USA 2010-2015 Lateral Office [Mason White + Lola Sheppard], Geo-logicas/ territorios 2012 and Pamphlet Architecture 30: Coupling [publication, 2011]
will serve to prove of the current direction in which urban design is heading, as a conscious, ecologically-minded act. This proposal’s recommendation is to mend little of the enclosed structures for further use. The intention with this project is to begin viewing the New York coastline as a dynamic and moldable ecological process, rather than a fixed and unresponsive object. By acknowledging the loss of structures in ecological transformation, the future coastline will respond to the knowledge of its soft infrastructure and the needs of the proposed vegetation, the living landscape, to accommodate future human input after the design has been implemented. In
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this way, the soft infrastructure [a forested coastline] will begin to act judicially, as MFN “symbolically trees represent mediators or decision makers whereas practically, they are physical boundary markers that define property and provide evidence of usuary rights in judiciary disputes� [credit: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations], and also as markers of environmental change, a new urban ecology to spark further research and development in the knowledge of northern [latitudes] coastal communities.
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TITLE In response to the daunting budgetary concerns, the project is partially funded by the city but
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M. N. also partially funded through personal investments by the patrons of New York City. Just as Universities and sports franchises offer the opportunity for alumni and fans to purchase symbolic pavers as a way to generate project capital, the NYCAF offers the opportunity for families to establish their own legacy in New York City with the purchase of a tree within the forest. The investment into the forest creates lasting social links and a reliable financial model for the project to use as a funding base, by which the entire landscape is designed of trees incorporated by New York inhabitants. The intention is that there will be no corporate MFN or MFN governmental purchasing of the sacred plantings, it will be a purely civil, social investment with the state and government aiding in landscape development, health, and maintenance of the landscape. This is not to say there is no place for government and corporations, but instead, specific marketing and programmatic strategies will be developed for their further participation, whereas the physical elements of the design will be led only by community members. It is important to note that this truly serves as an investment, not simply a oneway purchase. Social and cultural institutions throughout New York have served as sound financial investments by establishing themselves as significant waypoints in the city, and thusly increasing the value of nearly everything around them. A forest is comprised of thousands of trees, and the NYCAF is no different. The project is the aggregation of thousands of small investments, rather than relying on one large one. This makes the purchasing of an ancestral tree much more affordable, attainable and desirable to New Yorkers. One does not need to be named Trump or Barclays to own a New York destination. NYC
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[see Fig. 5.2 for further information about economic opportunities associated with this proposal]
c. Material proposal, Means and Methods To achieve a healthy coastline within cost-effective means, this project will take advantage of building knowledge in the Adirondacks and northern latitudes as inspiration for hardy and efficient means of construction. This means using a locally-limited, natural material palette with standard size elements arranged in an efficient manner. Innovation in this design comes with the vegetation choices and the informed and deliberate layering of this vegetation to work as a larger system, creating a strong ecology. Enclosed structures, or structures with multiple heavy, load-bearing floors will not be a part of this strategy as they are not as costeffective (in terms of the end ecological goal) nor are they reliable along an unstable coastline environment. This environment is potentially more hazardous in the future, and the establishment of more at-risk infrastructural elements is not in the best well being of the project, especially compared to the benefits that soft infrastructure and ecological diversity can create as acting drivers for protecting the irreplaceable cultural and human habitat on the island of New York City. On the existing piers along the coast, and filtering out into the Hudson and East Rivers, there will be gabion blocks built from recycled and [or] local materials placed off of barges and into the water to form the major structural elements in the marine habitat. Gabion walls have been chosen as the structural element for their ability to inhabit the marine environment as
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infrastructure for a marine reef system. Gabion walls are made from rock and stoneMFN rubble NYC enclosed in a metal mesh to hold the rocks in place, within this system there are built-in voids left for the inhabitation of marine wildlife and underwater vegetation. Here, oysters, crabs, mollusks, snails, and plankton can begin to flourish. With the introduction of this gabion infrastructure and the resulting space for ecological growth, within the next one NYC hundred years fishing and oyster harvesting would be reintroduced as activities in the water + MFN surrounding the city. Furthermore, gabion walls are readily made today and will be a sustainable structural element as they consist of only two materials: rocks or stone, and F. M. within N. metal mesh. Also, neither element in a gabion wall need “fit” in an engineered manner the other, such as timber and steel where seasonal expansion and contraction of the two different materials combined with water will corrode connections and the system after a number of years. In terms of design aesthetic and design options for different locations, the gabion block elements can be arranged in an innumerable amount of shapes and forms to create linear or curvilinear structures on land and in the water. The intention is to also use this element to patch areas where the current infrastructure made up of concrete and MFN MFN granite may be disintegrating, eventually to phase out much of the old system with the new over time.
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In addition, timber and stone boulders will be used as supporting structural elements taken as inspiration from northern design strategies from the forested areas of Upstate New York, and even from more northern locations such as in communities surrounding the Arctic Circle and Arctic Ocean. These structural modules serve as a traditional defense system, coupled with soft infrastructure, as they attract and grow marine reef ecologies in the rivers through time. Similar to Kate Orff’s Oystertecture, for the Gowanus Canal, future harvesting from the rivers would be a goal for the proposed infrastructure in the river. d. Final Design Remarks The NYC Ancestry Forest is a cultural landscape created by the participation of community members in the NYC area. The NYCAF creates a rich and diverse forest ecosystem along the shores of the Hudson and East Rivers for the purpose of protecting the invaluable resources of the marine environment as well as the physical and cultural manifestations of the city. The project promotes ecological diversity in the face of climate change and ecosystem crisis as global phenomena. The participatory design scheme is created for patrons of the forest as well as landscape and urban planning professionals, and ecology, anthropology and sociology consultants to work together in creating an iconic cultural landscape. To become a member of the forest, a sponsor will purchase a tree or plant from a suggested list produced by ecology, horticulture, and forestry consultants and also negotiate for a desired location for their plant. Once purchased, the City of New York will be held responsible for maintaining the health and vitality of the purchased vegetation as a legacy to the sponsor and the sponsor’s family. The plant will remain in its original location, and as its original species permanently in the park, as a sacred marker of the sponsor and his or her family. As the Ancestry Forest grows, visitors will be able to trace the ancestor history and unique cultural makeup of New York City through time. Landscape designers, anthropologists, sociologists, and cartographers will be consulted throughout the life of the forest to document and analyze the ecological and cultural ramifications of the forest network and to continually renew the means of disseminating knowledge about the forest and the ancestry documented therein according to the most technologically advanced means. As the outlined forest locations outgrow their boundaries, and with the anticipated continued desire for sponsors to enter into the Ancestry Forest, the design consultation team will target
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new forest sites for expansion. The future expansion will coincide with additional community MFN investments in urban planning and development in the City of New York. New sites will follow the logic as described in the original forest design document to preserve a historic repertoire, and sacred landscape to be revisited through time. Future input is not discouraged though, especially in the areas of ecology, landscape design, land art, disaster relief studies, coastal ecosystem studies, marine ecology, and similar fields, all of which will remain as required input for these sites as the professions grow in knowledge of natural systems on the Earth.
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M. N. Further help and consultation will be required from professionals familiar with the opensource mapping program GIS, for analyzing ecosystems and surrounding landscape conditions to inform the growth and health of the chosen sites as the forest gains acceptance and exposure within interested communities. Applications such as “iTree Design” and “iTree Hydro” will also be incorporated into a forest planning scheme to be outlined in a design proposal publication to gain the necessary exposure and support from public and private MFN MFN organizations, the general public and local community, NYC
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The Ancestry Forest is designed as a protective and protected landscape for New York City and its inhabitants. It is meant as a living, spatial and experiential narrative for those living in New York today, as well as for their children, grandchildren, and future unforeseen generations. The forest is also meant as a social and cultural treasure for the city, being highly unique in its scope and ambitions for creating a sacred and ecologically rich, and large-scale land installation within the city.
Special thanks to Adam Petela and Timothy Yiu for their support and advice throughout the process of this design proposal.
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iv. Addendum
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a. “Conceptual framing” quotes:
[1]
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Hugh Duffy, ASLA from LAM READER RESPONSE
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“Joyce Kelmer was right ‘… only God can make a tree’ and seemingly all it takes is a utility company to mutilate a tree.” -
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“New York City would be a forest, seven kinds of forest, fringed by tidal wetlands and eelgrass meadows, interlaced with streams and springs…”
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Eric Sanderson, “The City that Wants to be a Forest” from Bridging the Culture-Nature Divide ii
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“I was amazed by the beauty of the American landscape, its monumentality of scale, and its diverse and friendly peoples, but I was confused as to why so many water practices are oblivious to the value of the resource.” –
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Brooke Madill, Austrailian Landscape Architect, excerpt from the article “The Desert Divided: Water Postcards from the American West” in Landscape Architecture Magazine Vol. 102 No. 10, Oct 2012
“The community river project on the Tans River in Kenya failed, as one biologist noted: ‘Conservation is about managing people. It’s not about managing wildlife.’ Top-down projects fail because they don’t include or empower local communities.” -
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Interview with Caroline Fraser, The Dirt, Nov 2010
“Some biologists are interested in replacing lost species like the mammoth, elephants, cheetahs, or lions from Africa to restore the American prairie ecosystem… Aldo Leopold said we need to think about how a restoration project fits into the larger ecosystem and how many resources will be available over time…” –
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Interview with Caroline Fraser, The Dirt, Nov 2010
“Be content with your natural beauty Drink plenty of water Let your limbs sway and dance in the breezes Be flexible Remember your roots” –
Ilan Shamir, poet, United States
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b. Source texts:
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Unasylva No.213 “Perceptions of Forests” – from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations [FAO]: Corporate Document Repository found at <fao.org> Unasylva No. 237 “International Year of the Forest” – from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations [FAO]: Corporate Document Repository found at <fao.org>
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Unasylva No. 238 “Measuring Forest Degradation” – from the Food and Agriculture OrganizationF. of the M. N. United Nations [FAO]: Corporate Document Repository found at <fao.org> NYC
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“FAO Forest Fact Sheet, 2011” – from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations [FAO]: Corporate Document Repository found at <fao.org> Pamphlet Architecture 30: Coupling: Strategies for Infrastructural Opportunism– names…
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Rising Currents: Projects for New York’s Waterfronts - NAMES
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The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion – by Mircea Eliade “Measuring the Benefits of Urban Forests” – article by asladirt from the American Society of Landscape Architects found at <asla.org> “Trees are a Matter of Life and Death” - article by asladirt from the American Society of Landscape Architects found at <asla.org> Bridging the Nature-Culture Divide, II – from The Cultural Landscape Foundation found at <tclf.org> Including documents provided by NYCEDC: • • • •
Waterfront Inspection Guidelines Pier 40 Condition Monitoring Inspection Report East River Bulkhead Fulton Fish Market to Pier 35 Letter Report Fulton Fish Market Inspection Report
c. Source websites: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations <fao.org> Conservation International <conservation.org> The New York Botanical Garden <nybg.org> The Cultural Landscape Foundation <tclf.org> iTree <itreetools.org> qGIS <esri.com>
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