Gowanus by Design is proud to present the winning entries from Water_Works our second annual design and planning competition. The intent of the competition was to provide a new community resource that will occupy the site of the Douglas Degraw pool with a Combined Sewer Overflow [CSO] retention facility.
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In “The City in History,” Lewis Mumford described how the first great cities of Athens and Rome succumbed to the disparity of a city’s subcultures and accumulation of wealth for the privileged classes. Three weeks ago an article appeared in the New York Times about the developer David Lichtenstein; I started to wonder if the sunburst over Brooklyn will fade as those with similar track records and motivations determine its fate.
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Gowanus by Design is pleased to announce the winners of our second design competition. GbD is invested in developing appropriate urban planning solutions that address an extraordinarily complex issue.
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On Friday February 1st, the competition jury convened at the Center for Architecture in Manhattan to review Gowanus by Design’s latest competition titled “Water_Works” The competition focused on site-specific solution(s) that simultaneously explored water’s role in recreation, quotidian uses, and in contaminated urban environments, and demonstrate how a new community center and retention facility represent a more progressive view of our city's infrastructure.
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In Mayor Bloomberg’s NYC 2030 Plan, a goal is set of having a park within ten minutes walking distance of every New Yorker. In tough economic times maintaining existing parks is a serious challenge, let alone creating new ones.
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