Central Park Labyrinth

Critic: Karla

Rothstein

Semester: SP2016

Site: Central Park Reservoir, New York

City

Size: 103 acres

Program: cemetery and urban farm existing running path extended labyrinthnon-directed wandering entrance pointspurposeful direction path of dead paths of living underground access road central pool disposition cavities parking lot memorial garden low crops chapel interior central procession cucumber melon squash gourds onion garlic leek lettuce sun owers carrot celery parsnips corn wheat oats rye spinach beets chard cabbage broccoli brussels sprouts kale peas beans tomatoes peppers eggplant potatoes

> Horizontal cut reveals interior and low spaces related to funerary services and memorial.

> Siting shows relative ground heights, with white as highest; and oculi above chapel and outreach spaces.

The life cycle of New York City: juvenile o ender in the morning, community outreach leader in the afternoon, Central Park resident in the evening, tomorrow’s juveniles by morning.

The Labyrinth keeps this cycle.

The Labyrinth is a cemetery and a garden.

New York City residents return to their city - they become the hydrangeas, the sycamores and ginkgos, the organic tomatoes, the onions and brussels sprouts, the alfalfa and sun owers. They nourish New York City’s lung, Central Park. They feed the pigeons and sparrows, the squirrels and feral cats, the leashed dogs and families stacked in their towers, the brokers in their o ces, the displaced persons in shelters, the children and adolescents struggling to de ne their roles in the city.

> Central Park Labyrinth siting in spring, on a blue sky day with prominent cumulus clouds. Each crop has its own hatch; for instance, owers are dots, lettuce is hatch, tomatoes are oblongs, etc. See crop diagram for more detail.

The grounds themselves are organized as a labyrinth which gently descends along its path, enabling a gravity-driven irrigation system as well as a long, curving walkway for meditative re ection. The labyrinth has many entrances, exits, and shortcuts, but for the ambitious runner it adds 8.6 miles to the existing 2-mile track. You descend into the labyrinth down a series of steep, tree-lined paths that obscure the expanse of the inner spiral from the outside roads. As you emerge on the lip of the site, you see the arcing farmlands of the vocational youth outreach center, layers of green or orange, red, or yellow, depending on the season. You catch glimpses of the large circular pool that sits at the center of the labyrinth, quietly dissolving two hundred and fty six bodies into fertilizer.

The pool feeds through a series of canals, running backwards down the length of the inhabited arm of interior space, through chapels, classrooms, and hallways. Smaller streams snake o to feed vertical moss walls, and horizontal winter growth troughs. The spaces of youth outreach and funerary rites eat into each other like rust into metal, blurring the divisions between age, status, occupation, and activity.

This re-formed cemetery, where physical divisions are allowed to dissolve, also begins to dissolve social divisions. North of Manhattan is Hart Island, the largest publicly-funded cemetery in the world. Hart Island’s mass trenches accept those unwanted, unclaimed, or unable to a ord a cemetery plot, and its custodians are the inmates from nearby

Riker’s Island prison: New York’s unwanted burying the unwanted in an unseen place. The re-formed cemetery inverts the model of Hart Island by o ering at-risk youth the opportunity for ownership of sacred space, for vocational horticultural training as part of a comprehensive alternative to juvenile detention or punishment, positioning the youth as caretakers and benefactors of the land.