In his essay Nature, Infrastructure and Cities, Antoine Picon writes, “Before the rise of the environmental crises we now face, nature served as the support for infrastructures. Roads, bridges and canals were generally located in natural settings. However, in our contemporary technologically driven world, nature increasingly appears as a fragile entity that is itself in need of infrastructure support.”
New York has been the melting pot for architectural experimentation and innovation as well as the home to many industrial settings and infrastructures that are no longer operative. This, along with the more environmentally conscious approach architects are enforcing, has led to the appropriation of many of these settings fused with natural elements. These seven architectural projects showcase new, intuitive ways of “infrastructuring nature” by repurposing old industrial systems to create a “greener” New York City. As Antoine Picon points out, nature will never be prevalent in current metropolitan cities, nor will it be sustainable without artificial support. Nevertheless, the damage of overdevelopment is not irreversible as long as there are projects that recognize the hidden opportunities of these forgotten industrial ruins.
How can an abandoned railroad be reused by the citizens of New York City? Connecting the Meatpacking District with the Hudson Railyards, 1.5 miles (2.5 kilometers) of elevated rail tracks have been transformed into the High Line project: a public park that stands as an agricultural oasis amidst the franticness of the big city. Prior to the project’s realisation, the deserted railroad had already been “reclaimed” by nature. Consequently, when James Corner Field Operations and Diller Scofidio + Renfro designed the High Line they celebrated these natural diversities, by employing the strategy of “agri-tecture”. Irregular paving patterns and planting beds form a series of asymmetrical pathways, allowing the people of New York to experience the city through a different, more impromptu, type of lens.
Built in 1891, the Terminal Warehouse is an iconic post-industrial ruin of New York. No longer needing the traditional warehouse in West Chelsea district, the Terminal Warehouse is gradually being transformed into a collection of biophilic office spaces. As part of their design strategy, COOKFOX Architects have preserved the building’s historic architectural typology and used its masonry structure as an infrastructure for supporting a series of gardens and green terraces. Additionally, through a set of rail tracks, the Terminal Warehouse is directly linked with Hudson river. The disregarded railroad becomes an opportunity for reuse and is transformed into a pedestrian route that reestablishes the link between city and water.
Infrastructure comes in all shapes and sizes. The Governors Island, located south of Manhattan, is a piece of land that has been repurposed countless times. From an unspoiled landscape to a military base to a hotel and racetrack, the island was expanded through artificial means to host a number of contradicting functions. Finally, in 2006, West 8 won the competition for creating a masterplan that transforms the island into a public destination and landmark. They designed a historic park, a plethora of public spaces and a large promenade that wraps around the island. Nowadays, Governors Island has formed a symbiotic relationship with the New York harbor, eventually becoming its natural extension.
Located in a beach-front site in the Rockaways, the F.R.E.D. proposal introduces a new type of pairing between nature and infrastructure. Ennead Architects used the iconic Row House typology and the local sand dunes as the two components for designing a resilient infrastructure system. Their aim was to create a flexible strategy, which could be easily repurposed for other waterfront sites with the same characteristics and expand upon the research on “infrastructuring nature”.
For two hundred years, Hunter’s Point was a series of wetlands on the East river. Later on, the site was turned into an industrial hub and rail station. Eventually, it was diminished to a post-industrial ruin filled with decaying piers and steep landfills, inaccessible to the wider public. Finally, in 2018 it became one of the most transformative and ecologically driven projects in the city. A coastal park, a footbridge, a cantilevered overlook and even a landfill peninsula transformed what used to be an empty industrial site into an adaptable infrastructural system that reinvented the once iconic water edge.
Enclosed by the Hudson and East rivers, the island of Manhattan is naturally surrounded by many raw, uninviting concrete piers. Fortunately, the Pier 35 proposal transformed one of these flat blocks of artificial land into a much needed esplanade project. Pier 35 is literary “infrastructuring nature”. It consists of a folded landscape that gradually slopes down to the surface of the water. Its crinkled form interacts with the varying tidal currents, while replicating the physical characteristics of the East river shoreline. Above the water, a series of landscape lawns, dunes and inclined plant-covered screens form pedestrian walkways filled with vantage points towards Brooklyn and Manhattan bridge.
Also known as “The Big U,” this conceptual 10-mile-long (16 kilometer) protective ribbon around Manhattan was imagined in the wake of Superstorm Sandy. Ultimately, it was deemed unfit to respond to the challenging weather conditions that increasingly threaten the city. Subsequently, the Dryline is a project that redesigns lower Manhattan’s water edge, proposing a series of components that will aid to both the physical and social infrastructure requirements of the neighboring districts. More specifically, the project consist of a continuous protective element that also operates as playful street furniture, an elevated pathway and finally, a series of overarching greenways. In short, the Dryline project has essentially become the blueprint for effectively designing social as well as physical infrastructure strategies for coastal cities, providing new insights for “infra structuring nature” practices.
