Green GOOD DESIGN Sustainability Awards

Completed in June 2018, Phase II of Hunter's Point South Waterfront Park transforms 5.5 acres of abandoned industrial landscape into a new waterfront park. Phase II begins south of 54th Avenue and wraps around Newtown Creek to complete the full vision of Hunter's Point South Park initiated in Phase I, and resulting in nearly 11 acres of a continuous waterfront park. The park offers places of retreat and invites intimate connections with nature at the water's edge, complementing the active recreation spaces in the Phase I park. One of New York City’s most ambitious and complex developments in decades, Hunter’s Point South Waterfront Park aspires to be a transformative project. The park is well-connected to the adjacent neighborhood, to the East River Ferry, Long Island Railroad, two subway stations, Queens midtown tunnel, Pulaski Bridge, and CitiBike docks. By focusing on designing a park, streetscape, and infrastructural system that is innovative, flexible, and aspirational, the design weaves together new relationships between architecture, landscape and engineering to create places of retreat and recreation and offer new connections with nature at the water’s edge. The design embraces these diverse historical identities and serves as a new model for waterfront resilience, with a “soft” approach to protecting the water’s edge from floodwaters. To address the park’s irregular perimeter, the design team strategically located program elements and resilient infrastructure – often combined – to maximize both use and performance. A continuous meandering causeway, elevated slightly above the river, offers a walk along the river’s edge and protects nearly an acre of newly-established wetlands with an expanded plant palette that enhances water quality and promotes wildlife and fish habitation. The design also leverages the site’s dramatic topography with a shaded grassy promontory, a new island reached by a pedestrian bridge, a kayak launch, exercise and picnic terraces, a collection of intimate “break-out” lounges off the pathways, and a dramatic cantilevered overlook that hovers 30 feet above the wetland and offers panoramic views of the Manhattan skyline. The innovative and integrated design of Hunter’s Point South Waterfront Park creates a new sustainable community space that weaves infrastructure, landscape and architecture, bringing the city to the park and the park to the waterfront.