Thursday, September 15, 2011
Art / News Exhibition of Fantasy Plans for the Gowanus Canal Opens Tonight
Posted by Benjamin Sutton on Thu, Sep 15, 2011 at 1:09 PM
Things are looking good these days for Gowanus, the neighborhood and the toxic superfunded waterway for which it's named: there's the incoming Whole Foods, the influx of superfund funds, and the resulting absence of real estate developers accelerating the area's gentrification. It's all fodder for the fanciful visions of future Gowanus generated by the Gowanus Lowline design competition, whose winners go on view tonight at Third Avenue's SET Gallery.
The exhibition, which opens tonight and continues through October 1, features winners and select entries from the Gowanus Lowline competition, which generated some 98 proposals for ways to adapt the post-industrial polluted waterway for future uses.
The winning entry, Gowanus Flowlands (PDF) by local urbanists, architects and designers Tyler Caine, Luke Carnahan, Ryan Doyle and Brandon Specketer, proposes a series of terraced wetland layers stretching over the entire neighborhood on either side of the canal, and a series of tall, thin residential towers. The second place entry, [f]lowline (PDF) by the Swiss-Illinoisan team of Aptum Architecture and Landscape Intelligence, proposes a more modest series of public spaces and activity centers (kayaking, a floating pool, even fishing) at the water's edge.
Those and other proposals for the blighted waterway will be on view at SET Gallery (287 Third Avenue) today through October 1st, or you can browse all 98 entries here.
(ArchDaily; Image from "Gowanus Canal Filter District" proposal by burkholder|salmons)
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