How do you reclaim the city’s streets for pedestrian use in a way that is flexible, inexpensive and contextually appropriate to the site in question? We at Balmori Associates have been been wrestling with these issues since being asked, by the Meatpacking District Initiative, to create a temporary solution for the public space of Gansevoort Plaza in the Meatpacking District (MPD), just steps away from our office.

The NYC Dept of Transportation continues to reimagine traffic throughout the city and employ a system of bike paths, street closings and new traffic alignments in order to both create public space and make traffic more efficient and safer. While this strategy is citywide, the ways in which space is reclaimed must rely on neighborhood-specific solutions that enhance the existing use of space and enable new uses. On 9th Avenue between Gansevoort and 13th Street, DOT’s preliminary system of bollards and planters [profiled here on Streetsblog -ed.] left us wondering how best to imagine the public spaces created by the new traffic alignments and how to design a language of street furniture and planting that helps define the space. Before beginning to develop our design principles, however, we first had to ask: what should a public place be?

We wanted to engage a wide audience in answering this question. 40 Dutch urban design students and their professors, landscape architect Erik de Jong and planner Arnold van der Valk, happened to be in town and were eager to discuss urban public space in the American context. We invited these young designers to join Balmori Associates staff, our client – represented by Annie Washburn of the Meatpacking District Initiative – and some colleagues at our office. We extended the conversation to a worldwide public through live video and Twitter. The discussion touched on topics including ecology, funding, furniture and materials, program, public/private, public amenities, scale, and circulation/traffic. In the Twitter forum, the discussion focused on sharable space, urban decorum, and contextual appropriateness (read my summary of the topics discussed in the Twitter forum here). These topics helped us to develop our design principles.

For this project, given the brief, the principles we developed are:

+ Re-use materials
design to avoid waste
create rough, industrial aesthetics

+ Keep it simple
low tech and inexpensive construction and maintenance

+ Anticipate changing requirements
plan for easy reconfiguration

The video below chronicles some of the ways we turned this community engagement exercise into a preliminary design scheme where one simple and inexpensive piece of furniture with interchangeable components – a pole and hollow pole base, canopy and rubber mats – can perform the functions of planter, shading, space partition, seating, lighting… even a birdhouse.

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In other words, starting from the themes that emerged in the Twitter forum, we set about identifying the components that would help us to build an urban living room. Here’s how it works:

The flexibility of this solution allows for a variety of layout options, from grouped seating at right angles or in triangles, to weekend market activities or event space. But even when that is attempted and sometimes achieved, questions remain about stewardship and maintenance going forward. This scheme provides a starting point for a discussion. We need to move beyond reclamation of the street for pedestrian uses as an end in itself. The way in which it is reclaimed requires reconfigurable and inexpensive solutions that are both contextually appropriate and experimental.

Balmori Associates main design team:
Mark Thomann, Julia Siedle & Angela C. Soong

Forum hosted by Diana Balmori + Balmori Associates + Erik de Jong
With Guests: Architect Joel Sanders, Arnold Van del Valk and Annie Washburn
Forum Organization and Production: Monica Hernandez, Noemie Lafaurie-Debany & Sangmok Kim
Photography: Jeffrey Debany
Video: Nicoleta Coman

Diana Balmori, founding principal of Balmori Associates, brings a breadth of experience in architecture, urban design, landscape
architecture, ecology, architectural history and sustainability to her New York-based landscape urban design office. She is recognized internationally for her innovative work in the field of landscape and urban design.  She teaches at the Yale School of Architecture and the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and has recently been appointed a Senior Fellow in Garden and Landscape Studies at Dumbarton Oaks Research Library in Washington, D.C.  She serves on the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts in Washington, D.C.