Wasteland: Re-Engineering Willets Point
We addressed eco-industrial development ideas alongside issues of waterfront revitalization, wetland functioning, and job creation in the “iron triangle” at Willets Point, Queens.
This design studio will address the potential of eco-industrial development ideas alongside issues of waterfront revitalization, wetland functioning, and job creation in the “iron triangle” at Willets Point, Queens. This 48+ acre tract has been coined “little Calcutta” and has defied development plans for fifty years. It is at the head of Robert Moses’ Flushing Bay Meadows Corona Park and adjacent to the Mets Stadium, which was the subject of a redevelopment plan tied to the failed 2012 Olympic Bid. By considering waste management strategies within an economic, architectural, urban, and landscape design framework on this site, this design studio hopes to bring new ideas and a fresh approach to New York’s waterfront development and current garbage plan.
According to Mayor Bloomberg, Willets Point is the “bleakest part of Queens with arguably the brightest prospects of anywhere in the city.” In November 2004, the New York City Economic Development Corporation put out a call for ideas, or an RFEI for this area, and received 13 proposals, the majority of which were for shopping malls and hotels. Our studio hopes to expand the possibilities for the future of this place by addressing the economic needs of the community alongside the potential for waterfront reuse, public space and park design. Now that the Olympic bid is past, the city needs a new vision and new ideas to organize development.
Design projects may address a range of potential programs: for example, an Eco-industrial Park, or a metals processing plant where the non-reusable parts of cars go and where various metals are separated while the combustibles (Automobile Shredder Residue) go to a WTE, etc in concert with new waterfront access and a design for the tip of Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. Students may also choose to develop aspects of the park corridor, or explore concrete proposals for physical design of the new North Shore Marine Transfer Station and waterfront access. The work of the studio will be collected into an ‘RFEI’ submittal for the city at the end of the semester.
Site History
The Matinecock Indians, and the European settlers who eventually supplanted them, harvested salt hay, fish, crabs, clams, oysters, and waterfowl from the bay and surrounding wetlands. By the 1920s, the 1,200-acre Flushing Meadows had been turned into a gigantic ash dump. F. Scott Fitzgerald described the scene in The Great Gatsby: a “valley of ashes . . . bounded on one side by a small foul river . . . a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens.” The wetlands, as well as the creek that flowed from Flushing Bay, were filled to facilitate the site’s use as a dump. At one point, the Brooklyn Ash Removal Company was unloading 110 railroad carloads of garbage a day to be burned. Today, the site needs a fresh look and a new identity to organize and drive redevelopment, and could become a prototype for how contemporary cities can integrate natural and industrial ecologies.
Program
We will explore strategies for the design of an Eco-industrial Park (EIP) and related programs and their physical integration with our site: waterfront parcels along the North Shore of Queens and Flushing Meadows park. As stated earlier, one of the objectives of the Studio will be the transformation of a brownfield site to a modern Eco-industrial Park (EIP) where the needs of present occupants are met by well planned changes in present infrastructure and by bringing in new occupants, such as a metals shredding and separation plant, and a paper recycling plant. The studio will investigate the design of materials recovery, recycling, and sorting stations, Waste to Energy facilities, Marine Transfer stations in parallel with creating jobs for local residents and infrastructural and landscape-based site strategies for these programs. We will also explore the public health and environmental impacts of these systems and synthesize cost/benefit to the public with attention to the ecology and accessibility of the peninsula. Students may choose to do a detailed design of a piece of the park, the MTS, or an aspect of the Eco-industrial park ‘master plan’ submittal. Each student will be asked to explore a dimension of public-ness, whether in drop-off/recycling interface, the visualization of processes, or through related programs such as ferry terminals, parks, wetlands, recreational programs, etc. One of our objectives, both as architects and as engineers, will be to consider how we can create an environment that integrates the economic needs of current occupants and programs with landscape and urban strategies for waterfront revitalization.
EIP
Eco-industrial parks (EIP) are communities of manufacturing and service businesses located on a common property. Member businesses seek enhanced environmental, economic, and social performance through collaboration in managing environmental and resource issues. The EIP goal is to improve the economic performance of the participating companies while minimizing their environmental impacts. By working together, the collective benefits are greater than the sum of the parts. This approach includes green design of park infrastructure and plants (new or retrofitted); cleaner production, pollution prevention; energy efficiency; and inter-company partnering. An EIP also seeks benefits for neighboring communities to assure that the net impact of its development is positive.
Studio Process
The initial weeks of the studio will focus on research and analysis of the site and into EIP processes. Students will work in teams to research an aspect of potential EIP programs, and then develop a site strategy for a waterfront facility or facilities that, together with a public interface component and reconsideration of community access, addresses issues of ecology, transport, connection, and permeability. Our aspiration is, at the beginning of the semester, to work in small groups to develop several clear ‘master plan’ strategies for the sites. Students will then work individually or in groups to develop specific aspects of one scheme with attention to the programmatic and physical integration of these systems into the surrounding urban landscape and community.
Interdisciplinary Collaboration
Engineering faculty and students from the Earth Engineering Center will join the architecture studio as an important resource for our work. This collaboration will be facilitated by a formal weekly studio meeting with engineers (Wed afternoon) as well as informal exchange around project areas. Professor Nickolas Themelis and Phil Simmons of the SEAS faculty will act as additional critics within this framework. In addition to integrated waste management issues, engineering students may address provision of wastewater treatment, transportation, and energy infrastructure as well as waterfront revitalization, brownfield remediation, air and water quality, green building technology, and other issues as appropriate in order to transform the site into a model of industrial ecology. SEAS students will direct and conduct much of the engineering and scientific research to give our collaborative, developing vision of Willets Point a sound technical basis.
People and Partners
William Walsh and Venetia Lannon, EDC
David Burney, Director NYC Dept of Design and Construction
Adrian Benepe, Commissioner of Parks
Carter Craft, Director, Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance, Curator: Changing Tides II: Envisioning the Future of the East River, at the Urban Center
Dr. Steven Handel, Plant ecologist
Martin Stute, Hydrologist
Hugo Neu Corporation