• Boundaries of Tram Operation Extended Beyond the Catenary
• On Options For Travel (Pro-HSR)
• You need to get involved in the Heathcare Debate, and here are some links: Administrative Costs in Health Care: A Primer, The Problems With The Employer Mandate, A Smart Critique of the Public Plan (Sort Of), More to Health Reform than a Public Plan, Designing the Health Insurance Exchanges, French Health Care Costs Cheese-Eating Healthcare
• Philately Fridays: Brazil, 1973
• Crushload to Death
• The Cost of Driving in Manhattan: $160
• Brighton and Hove SMS Bus Notification Service: I Luv It
• We Could Subsidize Urban Farming, But We Probably Shouldn’t
• Metropolis POV: An Open Letter to Dwell
• Funding transit through market-rate parking spots
• Away With the Senate: It’s The System, Stupid
• Is Waxman-Markey Worth It? Short answer: Yes!
• Colorado passes law to allow rainwater harvesting

Reusing discarded industrial infrastructure is all the rage these days in New York City. East River Park was a rail yard and shipping dock, the recently opened High Line, a linear park in the air built on an abandoned railway, and Brooklyn Bridge Park which is set to open in the near future. Monday, I was given the opportunity to take a site tour hosted by the Empire State Development Corporation, the ASLA and Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates.
The Brooklyn Bridge Park is an assemblage of six existing piers and related upland fronting the East River on the very western edge of Brooklyn. Landscape design is by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates whose major design strategy was to create a larger interface between the water and the upland, adding an additional mile to the shore. A mix of active and passive recreation is distributed throughout the site, ensuring everyone from soccer players to kayakers are cared for.

Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates (MVVA) completed a two stage analysis: an existing infrastructure structural analysis and a program analysis. This was followed by creating an thick (intensive) horticultural zone on land with a thin (extensive) active zone on the existing piers. The existing piers are structurally sound, the Port Authority continually protecting and maintaining the piers from 1957 to 2007 when the Port Authority ceded control of the land to the Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy.
The park is currently undergoing demolition, utility relocation and installation and preliminary grading. The site was raw, but the beginning contours of the park was taking shape.

One thing to remember about the existing site: the site is immensely flat.
And loud.
Mind numbingly loud from the existing BQE, which is a perfect acoustical reflector, pushing sound away from Brooklyn Heights to the piers below. Which worked splendidly when those piers were operating wharves, but is horrible for peaceful relaxation. To solve this, MVVA with their acoustical engineers modeled the complete site acoustically, creating a 3-d sound map of the site. Through different iterations, the team decided the best course of action was to create a berm at the upland edge of the site at Furman Street, which would rise up over 20 feet to deflect the sound. The team refers to this as The Mohawk, which acts to quiet the noise, making the future park, Not quite Upstate New York farm field (quiet), but you would be able to hear (conversations).
Which is important. Because the site, as it sits now without the Mohawk, is fucking loud.
Much of the materials for the project is being reused from other large scale projects in the NYC area. Granite is coming from the renovated Willis Avenue Bridge and Roosevelt Island. Fill is coming from East Side Access, in the form of pulverized granite which is compacted and used as the base for the horticultural layers (the dirt). Also, the park will be catching and storing 80% of the rainfall to reuse for irrigation. Additionally, many of the existing pier buildings are being reused for recreation, or being recycled for other uses on site.

The success of the park will be based largely on taming the BQE and creating place (not merely space) where a desolate landscape once stood. Connections to the existing urban fabric are sparse, being only connected at the north and south ends and a proposed bridge at the northern end; the connective tissue must be strong enough to make the procession worth the trouble.
Success is already within the designers and city’s grasp: much like the High Line, the Brooklyn Bridge Park will open up views of Manhattan, the Statue of Liberty and Brooklyn Heights which only a few have seen. Standing on site you do feel like you are on the edge of a precipice; in the fading sunlight, standing on top of compacted granite from deep below Manhattan, it is hard not to stare at the Brooklyn Bridge and Manhattan slack jawed.
See below for a selection of photos, or check out my complete Brooklyn Bridge Park Construction Set.

Broad Channel graves, originally uploaded by plemeljr

High court – Le Corbusier, originally uploaded by mr prudence

Facade, originally uploaded by plemeljr

Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss.
Stirling Prize contenders in Glasgow School of Art competition hunt:

A competition to design a £50 million new building for the Glasgow School of Art has attracted over 150 entries including 90% of the firms shortlisted for the Stirling Prize over the past five years.

I think it is high time that firms who have enough work for the next 6-12 months just cool it. I mean, just look at the released lis:

• Rogers Stirk Harbour & Partners
• Malcolm Fraser Architects
• Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios
• Zaha Hadid Architects
• Allies & Morrison Architects
• David Chipperfield Architects
• Studio Fuksas
• Gareth Hoskins Architects
• Hopkins Architects
• Alison Brooks Architects
• Haworth Tompkins
• Grimshaw Architects
• David Adjaye
• Graeme Massie
• O’Donnell & Tuomey
• Page & Park
• Richard Murphy with Sutherland Hussey
• RMJM with Rafael Moneo
• MVRDV with Austin Smith Lord
• John McAslan with Nord
• Flacq with Ken Powell

Didn’t you go to kindergarten?
Sharing is key in life, or you will get sent to the corner for time out until the Great Recession ends.

Exterior – 04, originally uploaded by kelviin

Still taken from the movie Brainstorm (1983) – the entire picture is filmed around Paul Rudolph’s Burroughs Wellcome Headquarters in Research Triangle North, North Carolina (and the movie features Christopher Walken).