The park’s second phase, completed in 2018, offers New Yorkers an “urban wilderness;”; pathways snake along the site’s contours and between newly reintroduced wetlands and the water’s edge. Plantings engender a sense of immersion in nature.
Visitors are always conscious of Manhattan’s proximity, just across the river. A dramatic, cantilevered overlook offers visitors expansive views and the perfect setting for a selfie or even a marriage proposal.
Designed in collaboration with Weiss/Manfredi, Hunter’s Point South Waterfront Park serves an ambitious adjacent affordable housing development, with more than 5,000 units in the works. The park’s full extent spans from wetlands and gabion edges designed to withstand flooding to more imaginative elements, including the overlook and the “island” featuring artist Nobu Nagasawa’s art installation.
Landscape architecture, architecture, art, and engineering are fused in this extraordinary park, which was the result of a deeply collaborative process. Above: a team sketch by Thomas Balsley, Marion Weiss, and Michael Manfredi, the park’s primary authors. Arup’s engineers played a key role in the artful integration of infrastructure. The park was conceived as a whole, then approached in two phases.
The park’s first phase, above, focused on programmed spaces and also integrated infrastructural functions. The expansive oval green, for example, serves as an athletic field for a nearby school and, during Hurricane Sandy, doubled as a retaining basin for floodwaters.
People are drawn to the water, whether to sit or to stroll….
… or to engage in exercise or outdoor classes. Hunter’s Point South Waterfront Park anticipates all of this, and more.
The park also nods to the site’s history, transforming former railroad tracks into garden beds.
It’s an escape from the hustle and bustle of the city.
Whether a visitor is cycling by…
…pausing for reflection at the water’s edge…
…or experiencing the magic of Luminescence, Nobuho Nagasawa’s art installation, at dusk, the park is a memorable place.
Hunter’s Point South Waterfront Park
Hunter’s Point South Waterfront Park is an international model of urban ecology and a world laboratory for innovative sustainable thinking. What was once a barren post-industrial site has been transformed into a world-class park that is both urbane and otherworldly. The site is waterfront and city; gateway and sanctuary; blank slate and pentimento. These readings suggest an approach to the landscape that enhances what is unique about the site, while framing a new multi-layered identity as a recreational and cultural paradigm.
A collaboration among Thomas Balsley Associates and WEISS/MANFREDI for the open space and park design, with ARUP as the prime consultant and infrastructure designer, the project’s innovative and sustainable design strategies weave infrastructure, landscape, and architecture into new open spaces with connections to the surrounding communities. The park provides access to the water’s edge and spectacular views of the Manhattan skyline.
Designed by Thomas Balsley while at Thomas Balsley Associates, together with WEISS/MANFREDI and ARUP.
LOCATION Queens, New York, United States
CLIENT Port Authority
SCOPE Master Planning, Landscape Architecture
PRESS:
Hunter’s Point South Wins ULI Americas Award of Excellence
The Best New York City Architecture of the Past Decade
New York’s Newest Park Redeems a Wasteland
10 Fun Facts About Hunter’s Point South Waterfront
“We actually celebrate the kind of crazy shoreline that we were given. We leveraged its peninsulas into an extraordinarily different kind of waterfront experience, one that allows people to wander in and out, going closer to the water and back away from it. Those shifting perspectives … are really only possible with this kind of diverse shoreline.”
– Tom Balsley, SWA/Balsley
Nickerson Gardens Playground
Originally designed in 1955 by architect Paul Revere Williams, Nickerson Gardens is a 1,066-unit apartment complex in Watts, South Los Angeles — the largest social housing project west of the Mississippi. Core to Williams’ vision was an emphasis on shared open space, but its central playground, neglected for years, fell into a state of disrepair. In collaborat...
South Waterfront Greenway
A bold new plan for the area along the Willamette River includes a 1-1/2 mile extension of the City’s downtown’s parks and the reclamation of the river’s edge for public recreation. Working closely with the City of Portland, developers, and natural resource advocates, the design team devised a rational plan that places access and activity in targeted nodes wit...
Long Beach Shoreline
SWA prepared a land use and urban design plan for six miles of waterfront adjacent to downtown Long Beach. Through a series of meetings with local community stakeholders, we were able to determine the different needs of each district in the plan: of critical importance was the need to preserve valuable open space inland, and to maintain an ecological corridor ...
Honggang Park
Nestled between two hills in Shenzhen’s Luohu District, Honggang Park is a green corridor bringing over 80 acres of open space through the city’s dense fabric. Celebrating the site’s stark topography, SWA’s design carefully threads hiking trails along the slopes to minimize ecological disturbance, with stairs providing shortcuts along switchbacks. Altogether, ...