[NYguy]

Originally Posted by photolitherland

Uh, whats up with the random hills? Governors Island never had hills like that in the past, kinda strange.

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The planned hills are to afford better views of the harbor. At the other end of the harbor, on Staten Island, the hills are natural, so it won't seem unusual.


http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/201...HOW_index.html


A computer rendering of the aerial view of the Governors Island proposal.


A rendering of the South Battery view.


A rendering of Hammock Grove, which will have shade and lawns and hammocks for relaxing, on Governors Island.


A rendering the Western promenade, lower level, looking towards lower Manhattan.


A rendering of the upper western promenade.


The hills draw visitors down a pathway into a canyon-like landscape toward the harbor.


Scenic views from the hills showing the Statue of Liberty, at left, to the shores of lower Manhattan.


A rendering of baseball fields.


A rendering of bicycle paths.


A rendering of the parade ground area.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/13/ar...3governor.html

Governors Island Vision Adds Hills and Hammocks

By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF
April 12, 2010

When the federal government sold Governors Island to the City and State of New York for one dollar in January 2003, it wasn’t clear who had gotten the short end of the stick.

Was it really worth a dollar? Few people had visited the island since it was abandoned by the Coast Guard in 1997. For those who could get onto it, the charm of the 19th- and early-20th-century military buildings on the north end wore off as soon as they saw the southern end, a flat sprawl of concrete barracks and warehouses from the 1970s and ’80s.

...But Sunday’s announcement that the City of New York has reached a deal to take control of the island from the state and will push ahead with a plan that includes a 2.2-mile-long waterfront promenade and a 40-acre park, offers reassuring evidence that even in difficult times it is possible to get the tricky balance between public good and private interests right — or at least right enough.

The plan, by Adriaan Geuze of the Dutch landscape architecture firm West 8, calls for a park that, if realized, will eventually include a cluster of steep, artificially created hills that form a focal point at the park’s center, visually tying it back to the city. Its wildly original array of parkscapes — including a “hammock grove,” a grottolike shelter, playing fields and marshlands — will give the island the kind of strong identity it currently lacks. When considered with Michael Van Valkenburgh’s Brooklyn Bridge Park, under construction across the harbor in Brooklyn, it represents a shift in the character of the city’s park system as a whole that is as revolutionary as Robert Moses’ early public works projects or Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux’s Central Park.

The city has committed $41.5 million to the first phase of the development, which still has to go through the standard public review process, and is tentatively scheduled to begin construction in 2012. A new ferry landing area is to be built at the northern end of the island, with a big shaded lawn overlooking the Lower Manhattan skyline. The northern half of the Great Promenade, which will eventually encircle the entire island, will allow people to stroll along the waterfront under a shaded walkway with views that reach from the Statue of Liberty to Brooklyn Heights. And the city will replace the asphalt parking lot on the south side of McKim, Mead & White’s 1929 Liggett Hall, an old Army barracks that divides the island in half: visitors passing through the hall’s central archway will emerge onto a mosaic terrace bordered by flower beds.

It is from here that the development’s second phase — for which the city will need to raise some $220 million — should eventually unfold. Pathways will wind south through a wild array of sloping lawns and densely wooded areas, with the hills just beyond them in the near distance. Scores of hammocks will be suspended in a forest of oak and birch trees. In a rendering that shows the hammocks sagging under the weight of people napping inside them, they bring to mind human-size cocoons.

This processional narrative reaches its climax with the hills, which will be partly built on the rubble left over from the demolition of the Coast Guard barracks and warehouses. Some will drop off into cliffs on one side, creating “view channels” to major landmarks: for example, one path cuts through a narrow canyon that lines up with the statue of Liberty; another looks out toward the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. A paved terrace, with a 360-degree view of the island’s surroundings, tops the tallest hill; a more informal meadow another.

To the west, a cafe structure designed by the architecture firm Diller Scofidio & Renfro will sit at the water’s edge, facing the Statue of Liberty. A lawn expands out onto the building’s roof, where visitors will be able to climb down through a large hole into a grotto-like shelter open to the water.

The island’s southern end culminates in a watery landscape of marshes and tidal basins. By now the hills have entirely blocked out the view of the Manhattan skyline. A raised concrete walkway wraps around the marshes at the tip of the island, so that visitors should feel as if the edge of the land were dissolving around them. To add to the sensory experience, Mr. Geuze plans to plant the area with strong-smelling plants, like sea asparagus and lavender.

The movement within the design — the disappearance and reappearance of carefully framed urban views; the shift from a verticality that intentionally echoes the downtown Manhattan skyline to the flatness of the water’s surface — is its single most impressive feature. But such variations also speak to the ways the city itself is changing. The exaggerated steepness of the hills, for example, is not only a clear nod to their artificiality — a “green” counterpoint to Manhattan’s towers — but also a practical response to rising sea levels caused by global warming.

Another positive aspect of the design is the care that has been given to the boundaries that will divide the park from two future development zones on the island’s east and west sides. These lines are gently curved, giving them a more naturalistic feel, and Mr. Geuze has proposed several major view corridors that will cut through the development areas, which should help mitigate their large size...