Closing the GAP: Rethinking Grand Army Plaza and Park Design for the 21st Century
A jury of architecture, planning and design experts selected two projects for Design Trust collaboration in the upcoming year: Closing the GAP: Rethinking Grand Army Plaza, in partnership with the Grand Army Plaza Coalition; and Park Design for the 21st Century, in partnership with the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. These projects were selected from over 20 outstanding proposals submitted in response to the Design Trust's recent Request for Proposals, released in May 2007.
This year's jury included: John Alschuler, President, HR&A Advisors, Inc.; Laurie Kerr, Senior Policy Advisor on Sustainability, Mayor's Office of Operations, City of New York; Bill Menking, Editor, The Architect's Newspaper; Sylvia Smith, Principal, FXFOWLE ARCHITECTS and Claire Weisz, Principal, Weisz + Yoes.
Inspired by PlaNYC, Mayor Bloomberg's vision for a greater, greener New York, the Design Trust solicited proposals that will help New York City figure out how to achieve PlaNYC's wide-ranging goals. The selected projects work on different scales to address some of the plan's primary objectives. Park Design for the 21st Century will demonstrate how parks all across the city can be built more sustainably, and then at the local level, Closing the GAP: Rethinking Grand Army Plaza will improve the functionality of a historic Brooklyn transportation hub.
Closing the GAP: Rethinking Grand Army Plaza
Grand Army Plaza is the city's most glorious traffic circle, but it's a terrible environment for pedestrians and bicyclists. Working with the Grand Army Plaza Coalition, the Design Trust will create a new plan for this majestic Brooklyn crossroads, incorporating a green pedestrian zone and redesigned traffic flows. Members of GAPCo include the Brooklyn Public Library, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Prospect Park Alliance, Eastern Parkway/Cultural Row Neighborhood Association, North Flatbush Avenue BID, The Open Planning Project, and others.
Park Design for the 21st Century
The best modern parks use state-of-the-art materials and technologies to conserve energy, save water, and improve the visitor experience. By creating the High Performance Landscape Guidelines - the third in our trilogy of ground-breaking sustainable design manuals - the Design Trust will help the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation bring its 29,000 acres of parkland into the 21st century. The Design Trust's previous publications, High Performance Building Guidelines (1999) and High Performance Infrastructure Guidelines (2005) effected a paradigm shift in the way that New York City is constructed. These publications have paved the way for recent environmentally-conscious initiatives, including new local laws that encourage high performance construction.
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