Gowanus - The Open Studio
The Open Studio is a proposal for a sculpture yard as a public park, at the
intersection of the Gowanus Canal and the IND Culver Line Viaduct in Brooklyn, NY. This part of the city is simultaneously a place where the city is taken apart into mounds of debris, and where mounds of raw material are gathered to build it again. The viaduct raises the F and G train lines above the poor drainage of the former wetland, crossing the canal at a height of 90ft above ground.
The viaduct structure has been wrapped in black felt paper that is held in place by steel hoops and studded with bright silver anchors. This wrapping is to keep the riveted steel construction from completely shedding its 3” skin of concrete. Both the viaduct and the toxic canal are industrial manifestations of the former tidal swamp. Through them, the activity of construction and the forces of decay are played out simultaneously, and do not seem to be at odds with each other. Coupled with rain falling from the sky, running over the brownfields and into the canal, the concrete rubble falling from the viaduct is an opportunity to build the middle zone of the urban landscape as the connection between a landscape above and a landscape below.
The Open Studio aims to create a space of public inhabitation through the negotiated fall of the concrete skin of the viaduct into the canal. It uses the viaduct as a canopy for a public space dedicated to slow but constant construction and deconstruction, interrupted and possibly re-directed by conversation. The sculpture yard is a vessel connecting the canal, the viaduct, and the urban landscape in between. Using the falling rubble as a collector of soil, seeds and nutrients from the storm and tidal waters, it aims to reveal the potential for life within the toxic ground. It is not based on any single community identity or role for the public but instead on the existing processes, materials, and fragmentary artifacts of a place; anticipating a gathering of individuals to negotiate between the individual act of imagining and the collective act of constructing the city.
intersection of the Gowanus Canal and the IND Culver Line Viaduct in Brooklyn, NY. This part of the city is simultaneously a place where the city is taken apart into mounds of debris, and where mounds of raw material are gathered to build it again. The viaduct raises the F and G train lines above the poor drainage of the former wetland, crossing the canal at a height of 90ft above ground.
The viaduct structure has been wrapped in black felt paper that is held in place by steel hoops and studded with bright silver anchors. This wrapping is to keep the riveted steel construction from completely shedding its 3” skin of concrete. Both the viaduct and the toxic canal are industrial manifestations of the former tidal swamp. Through them, the activity of construction and the forces of decay are played out simultaneously, and do not seem to be at odds with each other. Coupled with rain falling from the sky, running over the brownfields and into the canal, the concrete rubble falling from the viaduct is an opportunity to build the middle zone of the urban landscape as the connection between a landscape above and a landscape below.
The Open Studio aims to create a space of public inhabitation through the negotiated fall of the concrete skin of the viaduct into the canal. It uses the viaduct as a canopy for a public space dedicated to slow but constant construction and deconstruction, interrupted and possibly re-directed by conversation. The sculpture yard is a vessel connecting the canal, the viaduct, and the urban landscape in between. Using the falling rubble as a collector of soil, seeds and nutrients from the storm and tidal waters, it aims to reveal the potential for life within the toxic ground. It is not based on any single community identity or role for the public but instead on the existing processes, materials, and fragmentary artifacts of a place; anticipating a gathering of individuals to negotiate between the individual act of imagining and the collective act of constructing the city.
