Teardrop Park

Teardrop is a 'post-industrial' park of a different sort.  It is found at Battery Park, a part of Manhattan created by reclaiming land from the river using fill from the excavations for the World Trade Centre.

This park both honours its riverside location and provides a lesson in Hudson River landscape, drawing on local stone formations and plant species to create a small memorable park at the centre of four new apartment buildings.

The centrepiece of the park is a breath-taking stacked stone wall that arcs from east to west, and divides the park into a focussed children's play space at the south and an open lawns to the north.  Level changes create different spaces, including the play space which is built around natural elements such as climbing boulders.

Other details include a stream zone to capture water runoff, sculptural stone shards flanking paths, the use of climbing plants to conceal fencing, and paving patterning that breaks down from a strict bond throughout main paving and circulation areas to an organic stepping pattern against planting beds.

Teardrop Park was designed by Michael van Valkenburg Associates.

Gantry Plaza State Park

Located on a former industrial site on the west of Queens the site offers drop-dead views of Manhattan across the East River.  The remnant industrial archaeology sits at the water's edge and is interwoven with the piers, playground, sun lawns, and groves of the park. 

Pink stone and pink flowers contrast with  the black steel.  At one point the stone blocks step down allowing access to the pebbles, plants and water along the bank.  There are no barriers or fences, just a beautifully judged series of transitions that puts the park user in charge of his or her own experience of the place.

On a summer Saturday picnicking families, pop-jetting children, sunbathers, dog-walking Manhattanites, pram-pushing grandmas, shade seeking readers, camera-wielding tourists, canoodling couples, a colony of geese and bare-legged girls playing in a mist fountain were all successfully accommodated along this small stretch of riverfront.

Gantry Plaza State Park was designed by Thomas Balsley Associates.

The Wright Stuff

You sort of know Fallingwater's going to be cool but it really, really is.  

This is the building that started the journey into design for me, and like all great requited loves it's somehow everything and nothing like you'd expected.

Dad, I wish you could have seen it too...xx

On track at the High Line

Construction is progressing on the High Line ahead of an anticipated Stage 1 opening at the end of the year.  This much publicised park is being developed on a disused elevated rail line at the western edge of Chelsea, snaking down to Gansevoort Street just enough for some so-cool-it-hurts Meatpackers kudos to rub off.  It smashes through warehouses and stomps across streets on huge rivetted steel legs, a hulking grey Titanic beside Frank Gehry's slick white iceberg.

In operation for only thirty years the structure was saved from demolition by public pressure, in a targetted campaign lead by the group Friends of the High Line.

The project design team includes landscape architects Field Operations, architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro and planting designer Piet Oudolf.  For more information visit the Friends of the High Line website at www.thehighline.org.

The Park of Water

Parque del Agua is in Bucaramanga, a city of 800,000 people located in the north-east of Colombia.  The park is built in the grounds of the city's water treatment plant, and although a small admission fee is charged to enter, it has become a popular local destination and one that is heavily promoted in tourist literature.

The design of the park uses water extensively; as large still expanses, rapidly running rills, terracing cascades, and fountains.  Located on a steeply sloping site the park is divided into two main parts.  From the entry pavilion paths crank and step up the slope, at all times bordered by water.  At the highest point a single straight timber walk runs from one side to the other.  It is edged on one side by the ultimate park bench - lurking open like a giant flip-top head it looks like a designer's conceit, until you collapse gratefully into its shady embrace.  To the other side stone totems mark the locations of steep water cascades.

The planting design takes advantage of existing mature trees on the site and is underplanted with luxuriant tropical species.  Cool and damp, this is a very nice way to reinforce the importance, power and delight of water. 

Moravia Cultural Centre

Following requests from the local residents, the local administration began the process of commissioning a Cultural Centre for Moravia. The building was opened in May and has been instantly successful. Local men and women staff the centre and local children queue to use the computer centre, water features and recreation areas. Music practice rooms have been built as well as rooms where English will be taught. The central auditorium is already well used, and the whole building revolves around an open entry court where a perspex-walled 'house' has been installed. Children make soft fabric hearts which are used to fill the walls of the house, forming a visual reminder that the heart of the community is in the Centre.

The building was the last built work of prominent Colombian architect Rogelio Salmona, and it features his favoured straw-coloured Bogota brick construction. The centre is directed by historian Carlos Alberto Uribe Uribe.

Moravia

One of the purposes of this study tour is to observe the nature of public spaces created on 'post-industrial' sites. Morovia is a suburb on the north of Medellin built entirely on a rubbish dump. The dump was started in 1972 and the city´s poor would follow the path of the rubbish trucks as they wound their way up the hillside. The first dwellings were constructed alongside this winding path, using materials recycled from the dump, and the streets now follow that same winding path. Houses were constructed using whatever material was available, although the local Medellin red brick dominates.

Due to ongoing concerns about the stability of the landfill, the local authority has instituted a policy of relocating residents into new purpose-built apartment buildings. Once a family is relocated the old house is demolished and a series of totem flags is installed on the site. The policy has not been universally welcomed.

Less than two weeks ago a new Cultural Centre was opened in the centre of Morovia. More detail about the centre will be posted in a separate entry.