Brooklyn Bridge Park

Brooklyn Bridge Park

Brooklyn Bridge Park

Brooklyn Bridge Park

Designed and built over the past 20 years, Brooklyn Bridge Park spans 85 acres along 1.3 miles of the East River waterfront. The project has transformed the hardened industrial site of abandoned warehouses, obsolete piers, and decaying bulkheads into a vibrant public space. In 2019, five million visitors came to the park, experiencing its responsive programming, panoramic views, and resilient design and construction. Today, park elements improve public access, reanimate six piers, and restore ecological diversity, blurring the edge between the East River and the park and proposing a new model for transforming civic urban waterfronts.
 
In the 1990s, local residents convinced authorities to turn a strip of obsolete waterfront warehouses into a park. It had extraordinary views of the Brooklyn Bridge, the Manhattan skyline, and New York Harbor. But the site was asphalted and flat, had piers in poor structural condition, and was deafeningly loud from the adjacent Brooklyn Queens Expressway.
 
The park’s challenges drove its design. The landscape architects built a series of earth berms along the highway to block noise, allowing visitors to climb 9 meters above water level and creating a heavily planted backdrop for the rest of the park. This resourcefulness extends to the shoreline. Instead of undertaking expensive structural renovations, the designers demolished failing sections of the piers. This allowed the inclusion of elements that bring the East River into the park: two salt marshes, a tidal sluice, a beach, and three ramps for launching kayaks. These soft edges reintroduce marine ecologies and absorb rising tides and floodwaters.
 
Structural capacity determined design opportunities. Piers 2 and 5, which were weakest, facilitate sports that require only a light playing surface. The more robust Piers 1, 3, and 6 stand up to the heavy soil fill and extensive planting. Piers 1 and 6 bookend the others, which took shape as funding became available. The park is a model for transforming a post-industrial waterfront into a rich zone of interaction among humans, infrastructure, and resilient ecosystems, adapting to sea-level rise while bringing joy to residents and tourists alike.

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A recent video documentary on Pier 3 helps provide a sense of what it is like to be in Brooklyn Bridge Park:
https://vimeo.com/394996282

 

The planning and design of Brooklyn Bridge Park has been featured widely in the design and popular press over the past 20 years.  A recent article entitled “Here Comes Everybody” by Anne Raver in the December 2018 issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine gives an comprehensive overview of the park and the urban experience it offers:
https://landscapearchitecturemagazine.org/2018/12/17/here-comes-everybody/

 

In 2014, Brooklyn Bridge Park was recognized with the American Planning Association’s National Planning Excellence Award.  As part of the recognition, the APA created a video that features the areas of the park that had been completed at that point:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrPi0PgzEx0

 

A “WNY Cityscapes” video from 2009, narrated by Michael Van Valkenburgh, gives a sense of the site’s original condition and the vision that the designers had for the experience of the new park:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-0_BYkXmvU&feature=channel  

A second video from the same series, also narrated by Michael Van Valkenburgh, looks at the Brooklyn Bridge Park site from the Brooklyn Heights promenade: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuSsanX51_A&feature=channel

40.6995399, -73.9973777

Collaborators
AECOM (formerly DMJM + Harris)
Accu-Cost Construction Consultants, Inc.
Altieri Sebor Wieber, LLC
Sherwood Design Engineers
AltPower
Architecture Research Office (ARO)
James Carpenter Design Associates
Maryann Thompson Architects
Kenny & Khan
Gensler
Battle McCarthy
Richmond So Engineers, Inc.
Ysrael A. Seinuk, PC
E2PM
Cerami Associates
Clark Wolf Company
Constructive Strategies
Cooper, Robertson & Partners
Greenberg Consultants
Urban Strategies
Domingo Gonzalez Associates, Inc.
Ducibella Venter & Santore
Eng-Wong Taub & Associates (now part of VHB, Inc.)
Sam Schwartz Engineering
Pine and Swallow Associates
F2 Environmental Design
Great Ecology
Steven Handel
Margie Ruddick Landscape
Henry Bardsley, RFR
HR&A Advisors
Susan Fine
Lodging Advisors, LLC
Mathews Nielsen Landscape Architects
Weisz + Yoes Architecture
Nitsch Engineering
Northern Designs
Open
Pentagram Design
Paulus, Sokolowski and Sartor
R.J. Van Seters Company
Fluidity
Year of the project conception
Planning, design and documentation: 1998-2010
Year of completion of the project
First section opened in 2010, final completion will be in 2022
COST (€/m²) ($/m²) (€/ha) ($/ha)
$350 million ($1017/square meter)
Price category
Transition
Price subcategory
Parques urbanos y metropolitanos
Surface
Park land
Customer type
Administració pública
Customer Name
Brooklyn Bridge Park
U.M.
343983 square meters (85 acres)
Construction company
Kelco Landscaping and Construction was the General Contractor in charge of completing most phases of work. Other construction managers included Skanska (Pier 1, Pier 6) and Turner Construction Company (Pier 2, 3-4 Uplands, part of Pier 6).
Works management
Gardiner & Theobald
Maintenance manager
Brooklyn Bridge Park
Maintenance costs (€/m²)
15€/square meter
Address
334 Furman Street
Coordinates UTM
Latitude: 40° 42' 8.14" N Longitude: -73° 59' 13.83" W
City / Place
Brooklyn
Region
NY
Country
United States