Drawing, Vegetation Proposal for Pier 1, Brooklyn Bridge Park, Brooklyn, NY

Upon its completion in 2016, Brooklyn Bridge Park was the largest public park to be built in Brooklyn in more than a century.[1] The park spans 1.3 miles of shoreline along the East River, stretching from Jay Street to Atlantic Avenue. The park was developed to replace a derelict bulk cargo port complex of six piers and a handful of warehouse buildings that were operated by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey from the 1950s-1983. For more than 30 years, the defunct complex was cut off from the residential neighborhoods that surrounded it by the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.[2]
The completed Brooklyn Bride Park has sought to provide both “social life” and “economic vitality” to the waterfront. Almost universally celebrated, the park includes a greenway and public amenities such as a playground and sandlot, a skating rink, ball courts, a fishing station, picnic areas and pedestrian lawns. MVVA’s design evokes a “new balance between human use and environmental health along the Brooklyn waterfront.”[3] Pathways and structures are made from tons of recycled stone and wood, and the replacement of marine piers with floating walkways have minimized the impact on the river habitat.
Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates (MVVA) began work on a proposal for Brooklyn Bridge Park in 2003 as part of the newly established Brooklyn Bridge Park Development Corporation.[4] MVVA completed the Brooklyn Bridge Park Master Plan in 2005, and the plan subsequently received the 2009 Waterfront Center “Excellence on the Waterfront” Award, a 2009 ASLA Analysis and Planning Honor Award, a 2011 Municipal Art Society of New York Brendan Gill Prize, a 2014 American Planning Association's National Planning Excellence Award for Urban Design, and a 2014 Municipal Art Society of New York MASterwork Prize for the Best Urban Landscape.
These two drawings are working renderings from different stages in the design of Brooklyn Bridge Park. The first depicts an aerial view of the bulk of the park including all six piers and stretching under the Brooklyn Bride. Notations and sketches have been added to a digital print showing comments on the topography and the form of Pier 2, which incorporates five acres of ball courts, play turf, and picnic tables. The second drawing is a rendering on trace of the vegetation plantings in aerial perspective on Pier 1.

Drawing, Vegetation Proposal for Pier 1, Brooklyn Bridge Park, Brooklyn, NY; Designed by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates (United States), Michael Van Valkenburgh (American, b. 1951); graphite, color pencil, pen and black ink on tracing paper; 61.6 × 106.7 cm (24 1/4 in. × 42 in.); Gift of Michael Van Valkenburgh; 2018-13-2

This object was previously on display as a part of the exhibition Saturated: The Allure and Science of Color.