Sponge Park (Paperback)

Susannah Drake

ISBN 10: 3038602493 / ISBN 13: 9783038602491

Published by Park Books, Zurich, 2024

About this Item

Paperback. Introduces DLANDstudio's pioneering and award-winning Sponge Park concept for the regeneration of the notorious Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn. The Gowanus Canal is hidden landmark in Brooklyn, New York, and a valuable but latent asset to the local and broader community. Formerly a wetland creek, it is now severely polluted and bordered by industrial buildings and surrounded by residential neighbourhoods. Yet public access to the water's edge is currently limited to streets that dead-end at the water. Since 1999 city and federal agencies addressed certain pollution issues, and recent plans for rezoning of areas adjacent to the water, as well as the increased demand for real estate in this part of Brooklyn, have spurred sporadic private development projects. Although these plans provide access to the waterfront within their immediate sites, they do not present a unified plan for the development of a publicly accessible open space system for the entire canal. To facilitate greater access and ecological productivity of the Gowanus Canal, the Sponge Park was invented by Brooklyn-based firm DLANDstudio. It is designed as a series of public urban waterfront spaces that slow, absorb, and filter surface water runoff with the intended goal of cleansing the contaminated canal water, activating the canal edge, and communicating a larger vision for stewardship of the environment to a community with many competing voices, agendas, and concerns. This book presents DLANDstudio's award-winning proposal. It introduces the Sponge Park concept in much detail and heavily illustrated with photos and illustrations, plans, graphics and diagrams. And it demonstrates how a chosen abstract strategy translates into concrete planning and design, community advocacy, and implementation. It is a must read for design students, architects, and academics as well as for elected officials, policy makers, and community activists. AUTHOR: Susannah C. Drake is an Associate Professor at University of Colorado Boulder's Department of Environmental Design and founding principal of DLANDstudio Architecture + Landscape Architecture in Brooklyn, NY. In 2020 her Gowanus Canal Sponge Park project won the inaugural Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian National Design Award for Climate Action. 95 colour, 9 b/w illustrations Introduces the pioneering and award-winning Sponge Park design for the regeneration of the notorious Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn, NY. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Seller Inventory # 9783038602491

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Sponge Park (Paperback)
• Publisher: Park Books, Zurich
• Publication Date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 3038602493
• ISBN 13: 9783038602491
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

Introduces DLANDstudio’s pioneering and award-winning Sponge Park concept for the regeneration of the notorious Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn.

Before there were sponge cities, there were sponge parks. Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal is the site of the Sponge Park master plan and pilot projects, instigating a widespread movement toward greater urban permeability. Designed by Susannah Drake and her former Brooklyn-based firm DLANDstudio Architecture + Landscape Architecture, their project was completed in 2016 and recognized with National AIA and ASLA Urban Design Awards and the inaugural Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian National Design Award for Climate Action in 2020.

The Gowanus Canal was the channelized reminder of a former freshwater creek and tidal marsh. Industrial use in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries left a legacy of heavy pollution in the soil and water. Historic industrial buildings lined the canal. Residential neighborhoods had limited opportunities to access the water’s edge.  Sponge Park was conceived as a series of public urban waterfront spaces that slow, absorb, and filter dirty surface water runoff to clean contaminated canal water, reduce combined sewer overflow, and add open space in a park-starved neighborhood. Revealing the form, distribution, and size of natural ecological patterns in relation to the shape and patterns of infrastructure, neighborhoods, and political jurisdictions was a key component of the design.

This book introduces the Sponge Park in great detail with photos, illustrations, plans, and diagrams. It demonstrates the concept’s potential as a component of a larger vision for a new paradigm of coastal urbanism, upland adaptation, and right-of-way design in the twenty-first century. Sponge parks proactively address how to manage stormwater runoff from increasingly severe storm events and reduce detrimental impacts. It is a must-read for design students, architects, and academics as well as for elected officials, policymakers, and community activists.

About the Author

Susannah Drake is a principal with Sasaki Associates and an Associate Professor Adjunct at the Cooper Union Irwin Chanin School of Architecture in New York. She founded her Brookly-based firm DLANDstudio Architecture + Landscape Architecture in 2005, which she merged with Sasaki Associates in 2022.