COMPETITION
Reimagining Brooklyn Bridge
New York, NY, 2020
w/ Robert Cannavino and Myung Jae Lee
What luck! Imagine our surprise when, perusing John Roebling’s archives, we came across an undated elevation drawing* of one of the East River Bridge’s towers showing not two but three bays! Could the iconic Brooklyn Bridge have been constructed incompletely? And how strange that Roebling drew the third bay in an unfinished state, without cladding; a scaffold, as if perhaps it was always intended to be an impermanent addition, an apparition, a shadow...
What better way to enhance the bridge’s status while vastly improving its utility than by adding a nearly 2.5-acre park connecting Brooklyn and Manhattan! Our landmarks must be adaptable; this seems ever more important during the current pandemic, when we are confronted daily with major changes in our way of life, our livelihoods, and in the fabric of our cities. Our proposal is simple yet bold: to add a “third bay”—a linear park—on the harbor side of the bridge but to construct it in such a way, as if it’s forever under construction, that it never takes away from, only augments, the beauty and grandeur of the original.
* some artistic license taken
Reimagining Brooklyn Bridge
New York, NY, 2020
w/ Robert Cannavino and Myung Jae Lee
What luck! Imagine our surprise when, perusing John Roebling’s archives, we came across an undated elevation drawing* of one of the East River Bridge’s towers showing not two but three bays! Could the iconic Brooklyn Bridge have been constructed incompletely? And how strange that Roebling drew the third bay in an unfinished state, without cladding; a scaffold, as if perhaps it was always intended to be an impermanent addition, an apparition, a shadow...
What better way to enhance the bridge’s status while vastly improving its utility than by adding a nearly 2.5-acre park connecting Brooklyn and Manhattan! Our landmarks must be adaptable; this seems ever more important during the current pandemic, when we are confronted daily with major changes in our way of life, our livelihoods, and in the fabric of our cities. Our proposal is simple yet bold: to add a “third bay”—a linear park—on the harbor side of the bridge but to construct it in such a way, as if it’s forever under construction, that it never takes away from, only augments, the beauty and grandeur of the original.
* some artistic license taken