WXY collaborated with Landscape Designers Starr Whitehouse and Garden Designer Piet Oudolf to design a completely new environmentfor this well-used public space, complete with park furniture and amenities. Once a two-acre area of asphalt, the Bosque now fulfills historic Battery Park’s potential as a destination: full of natural abundance, with spaces to sit, eat, and play, it is a lushly planted porch to the vast acreage of New York’s Inner Harbor.
The design’s elements articulate the new curvilinear park geometry. The elliptical Kiosks are derived from a series of arcs and made of certified sustainably-harvested hardwood. The Benches were designed to hold up to the punishing wear and tear of relaxing New Yorkers with an absolutely minimal use of material. Both Kiosks and Benches employ computer controlled manufacturing technology giving the architects direct control over the fabrication of subtly differentiated multiples. A walk-through water feature based on the spiral of Archimedes anchors the northern end of the Bosque.
To complete the park’s upgrade, WXY is developing a sea-life themed carousel. The SeaGlass project transforms the traditional ride structure into an instrument of the future with digital projection and electrified glass technology, Smart Glass.
The client’s focus on design innovation has resulted in a park that is rich and colorful in its planting and playful in its architecture, a series of public spaces and features that respond to the site’s extraordinary heritage with a contemporary sensibility.
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