Honor Award
FIXture : Remediation of the Gowanus Canal
Autumn Visconti, Student ASLA, Undergraduate, Virginia Tech
Faculty Advisor: Brian Katen, ASLA
Close Me!Gowanus Context. The Gowanus Canal is in a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. It is situated between the communities of Redhook and Carroll Gardens on the west and Park Slope on the east. The main channel is 1.3 miles long. The Canal has three major spurs, also known as turning basins. The three main turning basins together add 0.5 miles to the total length of the waterway. The study area encompasses the shoreline of the Canal as well as the surrounding land for one to two blocks inland.
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Close Me!Existing Conditions — Physical and Environmental. Today, the area remains a vacant manufacturing hub of warehouses and parking surfaces. The city is proposing to rezone the area along the Gowanus canal to allow for mixed use, and residential buildings. Beyond the notion of rezoning the land-use area, the canal’s serious environmental infrastructure challenges human occupation among this toxic site. Mapping the existing physical conditions and area toxicity within the Gowanus study area (with the help of various EPA and USACE Reports) will lead a better understanding of the surrounding neighborhoods and how each community interacts with this post-industrial void.
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Close Me!Context Analysis — Social Conditions. By connecting human activities that are located around the Gowanus a cultural dialogue is created crossing over the Canal. Social interaction around the Gowanus includes various art galleries and studios, educational institutions, dance and band studios, as well as a thriving night life. The extractions of these environs are further investigated through the preliminary design plan and into site specific design interventions. Four sites were later selected that exemplifies their educational, creative, and recreational values.
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Close Me!Contamination and Phytoremediation. After 80 years of intense industrial activity and petrochemical manufacturing processes, what exists today is an archeological patchwork of chemical hazards. The residual pollutants were classified into three physical depictions of pollutants. The above drawings explore the role of pollutants below the surface, and depict the role of phytoremediation as an antidote for each.
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Close Me!Phytoremediation Program. After understanding the physics of each pollutant, a prescribed phytoremediation plan will be implemented along various locations alongside the Gowanus based on previous data gathered as to where these toxic hot spots are located along the Canal. The three types of phytoremediation techniques (depicted above) would be established incrementally over time in site-specific locations alongside the Gowanus Canal (following image).
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Close Me!Preliminary Design Plan. A linear park of inlets, paths and other features follow the Gowanus Canal's reclaimed waterfront edge. While the northern portion of the Canal is faced with historical and architectural constraints, the central portion of the Canal faces severe environmental / physical degradation. The main channel is amplified with a natural free-flowing curve, carving out a tidally-influenced island. The island provides a point of reflection (coming from the head Flushing Tunnel and Pump Station).
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Close Me!Site Selection and Vision. By applying the overall remediation techniques along the Gowanus, and cross-referencing the social context of adjacent communities, I was able to determine four key areas for site specific design intervention. Each of these areas employ proposed wetland edge conditions, phytoremediation techniques, and site specific programs that will adapt over time through remediation towards renewed urban open space.
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Close Me!Site 1 — Exhibit Edge — Design Development. [1] The Exhibit Edge is within the direct vicinity of the site are a diverse array of art galleries, studios, and residences, the site encompasses an existing vacant warehouse. [2] The site is also adjacent to the Union Street Bridge, which would allow for connection and interaction between the two adjoining neighborhoods of Park Slope and Carroll Gardens. [3] Pollution hot spots, below surface, must be treated with a variety of the prescribed phytoremediation programs. The primary pollutant concern is highlighted in red and would be treated with the phyto-pumping groves.
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Close Me!Transformative Sculpture Garden. The overall vision of the "Exhibit Edge" outdoor sculpture garden provides the public a unique opportunity to visit and engage with various forms of visual art. The design evolves over time as trees are thinned out after remediation. The site then opens up to its user-program adjacent artist gallery into an out-door sculpture garden within the skeleton of an abandoned warehouse building. Pathways evolve from the grove footprints and create allees that frame pedestrian corridors from the warehouse exterior towards the water's edge.
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Close Me!Site 2 — Education Edge — Design Development. [1] the context for the second site selection is based off its proximity to area schools. The architectural condition of the site allows for room to create an education center in relation to the water's edge. [2] The education edge is a proposed educational laboratory — a showcase of remedial techniques used in sequence with storm water runoff filtration. Its terraced wetland system coupled with the hyper accumulating bio swale creates two unique wetland systems that are planted with a mix of tidal marshes. [3] Due to its contaminant condition, a safe and well-rounded learning program must take time and place in order to educate nearby school facilities about how this site is being reclaimed through active and passive remediation.
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Close Me!Transformative Outdoor Classroom. Here, human and natural systems interrelate along the edge of the Gowanus Canal through the proposed site design. The tidal influence is also a design element, creating occupiable space and learning exhibits during low and high tide. An outdoor amphitheater is also incorporated into the terraced bulkhead design as an additional learning platform that looks out towards the Gowanus and the terraced wetland system that runs along a portion of its edges.
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Close Me!Site 3 — Natural Edge — Design Development. [1-3] the context of the natural edge site stands between a heavily pedestrianized and automobile traffic zone to the north and vacant parcels of land the south. The site is also adjacent to 3rd Street Bridge. The incorporation of recreational connections are programed into the design solution. Cut and fill for the proposed channel relocation will be used as a new medium for a capping solution to below grade contaminants (to prevent leaching out in the newly re-graded areas).
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Close Me!Transformative Ecological Promenade. Along the Natural Edge is a proposed multi-use recreational path system intended to facilitate users without disturbing the ecosystem. This emergent environ does not have abrupt physical edges but transitional zones. A new channel is proposed and redirects water through the Canal's lower turning-basin. By dredging and cutting, the fill will be used to establish a "tidal island." Grading the old main channel to a depth that will foster water during its high tide. The re-graded tidal channel now provides a riparian habitat during both low and high tidal.
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Close Me!Site 4 — Gowanus Art Factory. This parcel of land is adjacent to the Gowanus Canal and home of one of the first manufactured gas plants in the Greater New York area, using coal-gasification processes to produce fuel. Over time, the site evolved into a barren lot where no industrial relics remain. The only evident trace left is within the soil body itself – a below surface toxic regime. A focus on cultural analysis within the surrounding neighborhoods took place, as well as historical justification to the site. The design concept of the site speaks to the industrious nature of the site. The plan transcends a pedestrian axis and follows the same processes that once occurred on the site.
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Close Me!Site 4 — Gowanus Art Factory. The site plan embraces large-scale organizational techniques, historical expression in varying landforms (the topographic from (depicted above) frames the foot-print of the site’s largest storage vessel on site). The design also provides work/display opportunities for the local and regional art community. The artists and their work constitute a vital piece of the fabric of urban life by linking community together through the arts.
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Project Statement
This project is an embodiment of both environmental design and technology in order to reclaim one of New York's heavily disturbed, post-industrial waterfronts. The vacant corridor of the Gowanus Canal, located in Brooklyn N.Y., punctuates the landscape with unacceptable socioeconomic deterioration and abandonment. With potential for spontaneous and creative use, this site can become a place for renewed experience of the urban waterfront whose edge embraces rather than eradicates the natural and radical transformations of environmental remediation.
Project Narrative
—2011 Student Awards Jury
My background in post-industrial landscapes began at first with an artistic impression—finding beauty out of toxic sites. By better understanding the process of remediation, I was able to move forward to a particular site that would push me to learn not only the remediation of soils—but of polluted water bodies. By also utilizing a comprehensive study of time, place and human interaction, the Gowanus Canal has broadened my interests in remediation from an artistic perspective towards the landscape as a whole.
Jostled by an accelerate change of pace in the modern society of New York City, the industrial environment of lower Brooklyn has degraded into shattered remnants of what it once was. This post-industrious landscape is a physical narrative telling a story of what lead to its demise. The landscape continually evolves, which requires thinking beyond the site's deindustrialization. In this volatile context, a renewed interest in the Gowanus Canal has emerged within the last two decades. Within its urban context, post-industrial waterfronts re-create occupiable space. At the same time federal authorities raise the question of its contamination and the overall well-being of its surrounding communities.
Research Team
The knowledge gained through the utilization of academic networking helped me build a critical foundation of inquiries, which were then administered throughout my senior project. By reaching within the university's academic resources I was able to develop successful relationships with people who are working directly with my site in Brooklyn, NY. The research team has expanded beyond the borders of campus and became a vehicle for the research component of this project. This was done through formulating critical inquiries, expanding beyond the realm of landscape architecture, and synthesizing research into applicable design guidelines.
Brief History
Built in the mid 19th century, where a creek once meandered, the Gowanus Canal served foundries, coal yards, gasification facilities and hundreds of other industries. Over time, it became one of the most heavily contaminated water bodies in the nation and remains the most problematic brownfield in New York City. Reclaiming the site can uncover hidden dimensions of 19th century mass production and 20th century consumerism. As the surrounding urban population continues to grow, this void within the urban fabric faces the obligation to change.
Goals and Objectives
The social and ecological goals for the Gowanus Canal will become successful by design through the accomplishment of the following objectives:
Ecological Goals
(1) Integrate leading forms of remedial technologies. (2) Inhabit the natural cycles of existing conditions. (3) Install a park the becomes process over time.
Ecological Objectives:
Propose ecological framework that adapts over time. Clean and improve overall water quality. Reestablish the integrity of the surrounding soil bodies. Recreate aquatic habitats and vegetation. Apply innovative mediums of remedial technologies (both active and passive).
Social Goals
(1) Reactivate the educational and creative infrastructure. (2) Reflect the industrial history of the Gowanus Canal. (3) Recreate a new urban edge condition along the waterfront the surrounding communities.
Social Objectives
Connect existing cultural institutions to the water's edge. Create a better understanding of historical impact through education. Create public open space. Utilize surface parking lots and vacant land/buildings.
Remediation Strategy
Due to underground water flows, geological formations, and intensity of original pollutant resource, the Canal's water body faces severe ecological deterioration. In order to reclaim the health of the water body remediation must begin where the pollutant source was established on land. A passive approach includes the technique of phytoremediation (using deep-rooted plants to sequester and eliminate pollution below the surface). Each technique can be coupled with other means of remediation, both active and passive. The planting proposal is based on the following factors of research and synthesis in contaminant movement, spacing and root depth, and life-span of species. The proposed remedial guidelines strictly administer series and sequence in order to create occupiable, urban, open space for future user-specific program and design.
Design
By studying local communities that are relevant, a proposed program can relate into its broader social context while adapting to site-specific design interventions along the banks of the Canal. The site selections were made based on the critical condition of the site (both ecologically and socially), concept, and pollution class. The first three of the four sites explore the notion of environmental remediation and how a contaminated site can adapt, and change over time, towards a proposed site program for specific needs and user groups. The fourth site of on the Canal transcends the remediation processes as a whole and looks towards to future of economic growth for the Gowanus. To reclaim the overall health of the Gowanus Canal ecosystem, a choreographed series of events in relation to each natural system must take place. Each system is addressed within the direct vicinity of the Canal and is coupled with a variety of remediation techniques.
Additional Project Credits
I would like to acknowledge and extend my heartfelt gratitude to the following persons who have made the completion of this project possible:
My advisor, Brian Katen ASLA, for his vital encouragement, guidance, patience, and support.
Dean Bork ASLA, Terry Clements ASLA, Wendy Jacobson, Mintai Kim, Ben Johnson, Patrick Miller, FASLA and Dave McGill for the extended help and inspiration.
Rachel Gruzen, Environmental Consultant, and other members of my research team for the assisting in the collection of topics.
Lastly, I offer my regards to all those who supported me in any respect during the completion of my project. Most especially to my family, Dawn and Robert Visconti, friends, and the "Fam" Jordan Clough, Kent Hipp, Ashleigh Marshall, Adam Sexton and Caroline Wallace—I love you all more than I can say.