Design the Edge
Photo Tour of Harlem River Park Design the Edge Project
National Benchmarking for Design the Edge
The New York City Department of Parks & Recreation, the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance (MWA), and local community initiatives are collaborating on projects to replace degraded steel walls along New York waterways with something dramatically different, with more habitat value and which allows recreational use of the water.
In 2002 the first “Designing the Edge” project in Harlem River Park, funded in part by New York State Coastal Resources, began as an effort to provide alternatives to the industrial steel bulkheads which were installed to facilitate industry and shipping. A $40,000 grant allowed the design team more time to imagine, research, and brainstorm with an unusual combination of scientists and artists, and extend community involvement to inform and redirect what would otherwise have been a standard city park with a vertical seawall separating park use from the river. Our aim for the Harlem R. site was to design a stable shoreline that improves fish habitat along the shoreline, makes the waterfront edge more compatible with recreational use, and creates safe public access to the water. Beginning with a workshop held adjacent to the park in East Harlem, a landscape architect and a planner, marine engineer, marine biologist, and environmental artists, joined with MWA, the Harlem River Park Task Force, community members, and other interested citizens and professionals to develop a series of ideas specific to the Harlem River conditions.
Plastic models of three prototypes of porous shorelines were tested in a wave tank so that the effect of the shoreline shape and alignment of water flow and velocity could be analyzed. The results influenced the final design. Construction of Harlem River Park Phase Two began in Summer 2007. Phase Three Construction also began in 2007. When these portions are complete, Harlem River Park will present an ideal location to compare durability, amenities, and habitat value of the traditional steel sheet pile wall in Phase One with shell and rock-filled gabions and tide pools in Phase Two, and planted “Greenwall” structures in Phase Three.
To see a visual tour of the step by step process taken to transform the Harlem River Park waterfront, follow this link.
Through the collective efforts of the Harlem River Edge design team as well as incorporation of green development principals, a comprehensive list of Design the Edge Criteria was created as a guide for future waterway edge development.
