Gowanus Competition New York, NY Design Contest, Lowline, Brooklyn

Gowanus by Design Competition – Brooklyn Design Contest

New York Architecture Contest design by AGER Group

Aug 23, 2011

Gowanus Lowline Competition

Gowanus Lowline Exhibition

GOWANUS BY DESIGN ANNOUNCES GOWANUS LOWLINE: CONNECTIONS GALLERY EXHIBITION

August, 2011 Brooklyn, NY – The winning submissions from Gowanus by Design’s inaugural competition Gowanus Lowline: Connections (http://www.gowanuslowline.org/), along with the four honorable mentions, 20 thought provoking “idea leaders” and three winning student teams from the Brooklyn School for Collaborative studies will be on display at the SET Gallery, 287 Third Avenue, Brooklyn for two weeks in September. The show’s opening night is Thursday, September 15, from 6:00 to 9:00 pm.

The competition attracted the interest of a wide range of individuals from differing disciplines. Projects were submitted by 188 applicants from 14 countries around the world including Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, England, Finland, France, Germany, India, Italy, Korea, Lithuania, the Netherlands and the United States. Applicants from the U.S. submitted from 14 states including California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, and Pennsylvania. There were also 26 submissions from Brooklyn.

About the Gowanus Connections Competition

Gowanus Connections is GbD’s inaugural international ideas competition, inviting speculation on the value of the urban development of postindustrial urban lands, and the possibility of dynamic, pedestrian-oriented architecture that engages with the Gowanus Canal and the surrounding watershed. This competition, the first of a series, focuses on the design of connections in and around the canal, and the residual moments around these connections.

One of GbD’s objectives is to generate a discourse about urban issues that are currently relevant to the Gowanus Canal community. The competition was designed to generate a spectrum of possible solutions.

The applicants were judged by an independent jury of award-winning practitioners including landscape architect, Julie Bargmann of DIRT Studios; architects David J. Lewis of LTL Architects and Greg Pasquarelli of SHoP Architects; urban planner Richard Plunz of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation; Andrew Simons of the Gowanus Canal Conservancy and Joel Towers, dean of the Parsons School of Design. The jury’s criteria included focusing on designers who explored their design sensibilities while tackling complex urban challenges specific to the canal.

About Gowanus by Design

Gowanus by Design (www.gowanusbydesign.com) proposes a new strategy for development of the Gowanus area, showcasing different options for the canal and including the many voices of canal stakeholders. Made up of industry professionals and local residents, our mission is to bring to bear the same analytical and research tools that we use for our professional clients and to use them for the benefit of our community and our neighbors.

Gowanus by Design Winners

First Place Prize

Project: Gowanus Flowlands
Team: Tyler Caine, Luke Carnahan, Ryan Doyle, Brandon Specketer

Jury comments: “This project understands that density and remediating the environment is part of a sustainable urban strategy. Presents a more compelling urban condition and suggests a new type of urban landscape that suggests living with remediation.”

Second Place Prize

Project: [f]lowline
Team: Aptum/Landscape Intelligence
Members: Gale Fulton, Roger Hubeli, Julie Larsen

Jury comments: “A clever strategy and a sophisticated, realistic approach to phasing. Adapts and responds to changing conditions and offers a vision of the future.”

Honorable Mentions

Project: Domestic Laundry: Flush Basin Curtain Mattress Pillow Team: Agergroup
Members: Jessica Leete.Claire Ji Kim, Shan Shan Lu, Winnie Lai, and Albert Chung

Project: Made in Brooklyn: Bridges For Local Artisans & Industry
Members: Nathan Rich and Miriam Peterson

Project: B.Y.O.B. (Build Your Own Bridge)
Team: Austin+Mergold LLC
Members: Jason Austin, Alex Mergold, Jessica Brown, Sally Reynolds

Project: Gowanus Canal Filter District
Team: burkholder|salmons
Members: Sean Burkholder, Dylan Salmons

The competition and exhibition are supported by the Gowanus Canal Community Development Corporation (gowanus.org), Soho Reprographics and the SET Gallery.

3 Aug 2011

Gowanus Lowline : Connections Competition

Airing our Domestic Laundry as a Connection to Place: AGER Group’s Boston Office Receives an Honorable Mention

Design: AGER Group

The Gowanus Canal is located in the Brooklyn borough of New York City and is one of the only underdeveloped areas left for good reason. In 2010 the EPA put Gowanus Canal on the Superfund National Priorities List. The approximately mile long canal was built on an existing creek in 1869 and acted as a major cargo transportation hub between Brooklyn and New York City with manufactured gas plants, mills, tanneries, and chemical plants among the industries located there.

In addressing the Gowanus Canal site and community, AGER focused on industry past, present, and future looking for connections that allow the legacy of this place to continue. The competition organizers, Gowanus by Design, set speculation on the value of urban development of postindustrial lands, and the possibility of dynamic, pedestrian-oriented architecture that either passively or actively engages with the canal and surrounding watershed as the main competition objectives.

image from AGER Group

AGER’s design approach is based on the belief that we can transform retrograde materialism into a healthy working industrial ecology where wastes are recycled, resources conserved, and community regenerated based on the existing foundations of a site. Using a variety of bioremediation and site cultivation methods our “Domestic Laundry” is aired through the language of the “Flushing Basin” or cleansing wetland, “Curtain” or vertical filter, “Mattress” or microbial matrix medium, and “Pillow” or soil cleansing berm. Through an opportunity for observation and participation in the processes of site remediation people are connected to place and the industry that makes it so.

Phase I

image from AGER Group

Based on the EPA’s site analysis the most polluted sites are aggressively excavated into a laboratory for testing innovative means of site remediation. Rather than resorting to expensive methods that just relocate the problem to another site we see all sites as connected and use this as an opportunity to exhibit affordable effective methods for remediation of contaminated sites that could be implemented world wide. Cleansing wetlands are located at all CSO’s and soil barges are used to treat contaminated canal sludge onsite. Existing business and community groups are considered resources and integrated into this process thus establishing an identity for the Gowanus Canal as one of innovation and industry.

Phase II

image from AGER Group

After evaluation of the initial laboratory of remediation methods the most effective are intensified and soon public access and observation can be realized at more locations. Pedestrian, bike, and water taxi connections can be established with ongoing efforts in the Brooklyn area toward the end of this phase and commercial and mixed use development can ensue.

Phase III

image from AGER Group

By the third phase the soil and water cleansing processes maintain neighborhood health and are well established contained industries offering technology resources to the region. Residents can take pride in the Gowanus canal as an epic example of our sustainable future. The once contaminated canal has become an amenity and residents and visitors stroll along the promenade in leisure or to view the diverse examples of industrial innovation and urban ecology.

Flush Basin Curtain

image from AGER Group

Future canal basin contamination is limited by flushing water through a variety of remediation methods including floating microbe islands, phytoremediation terraces, and a curtain wall made from custom fabricated architectural grill by a local industry that filters all site run off through biomatrix and phytoremediation layers.

Curtain Mattress

image from AGER Group

A Microbial Fuel Cell (MFC) mechanism uses contaminated soil as a fuel to generate energy. The MFC is integrated into a geotextile retaining wall and sliding walkway powering the LED display that is woven into the geotextile membrane. The greater the contamination the more power generated for the LED lighting. The LED lighting becomes a performance indicator, which informs passerby of the level of soil contamination.

Mattress Pillow

image from AGER Group

The remediation process of land farming is articulated through landforms that are designed with infrastructure necessary to accelerate the soil cleansing process. Sod attached to a geo-textile membrane provides a movable surface of containment over layers of contaminated soil and layers of bio-augmented material. A network of tubing connected to vertical drywells provides a means for monitoring contamination, maintaining moisture levels, and injecting the biomatrix mixture specific to the soil being treated.

image from AGER Group