CIVITAS Launches Discussion Series with East River Waterfront Panel

Michael Storm 

The East River Esplanade looking south from East 71st Street. Courtesy of Anton Brookes. 

This fall marks the inaugural series of CIVITAS’s panel and lecture programs entitled Art, Design, and the Urban Environment. It will address issues important to the quality of life on the Upper East Side and in East Harlem. The series, co-sponsored by CIVITAS and the National Academy, is an inter-disciplinary exploration of neighborhood issues that intertwines CIVITAS’s mission to improve the quality of urban life with the mission of the National Academy to sustain the visual arts. 

Pier 15 along the East River, Courtesy of SHoP.

The first panel, held on October 2nd, brought together panelists from a variety of backgrounds to explore how art and design could transform the East River Waterfront. The panelists were Cecilia Alemani, Donald R. Mullen, Jr. Curator and Director of High Line Art; Al Appleton, former Commissioner of New York City’s Department of Environmental Protection; Michael Marrella, Director of Waterfront and Open Space for the New York City Department of City Planning; and Charles Birnbaum, Founder and President of The Cultural Landscape Foundation. Subsequent panels this winter will address Urban Revitalization and East Harlem Rezoning as well as Transportation and the Second Avenue Subway. 

In advance of the first event, CIVITAS spoke with the panel’s moderator, architect Gregg Pasquarelli, to learn about his work designing the southern section of the East River Waterfront. His firm, SHoP, redesigned the waterfront underneath the FDR overpass, connecting the Battery Maritime Center to East River Park, just south of the Williamsburg Bridge, bringing the prospect of a continuous waterfront along the East Side one step closer to reality. Pasquarelli’s important role in this process has given him a unique vision for how and why the waterfront should serve our community. 

In August, CIVITAS spoke to Gregg Pasquarelli about his work on the East River waterfront. 

Gregg Pasquarelli. 

Courtesy of SHoP 

CIVITAS: In your work along the southern portion of the East River waterfront, what options did you explore in redeveloping the area? 

Gregg: When we first did the original masterplan we looked at literally dozens of different strategies from burying the FDR Drive, leaving it as a bridge, floating it as an island, building an actual barrier to raise the FDR for storm protection, putting in muscle reefs, putting in barrier islands. We looked at dozens and dozens of things that could be done:

C: The FDR Drive replaced what used to be heavy industry, so you are dealing with New York City’s post-industrial waterfront with the city contained by a freeway. 

G: Exactly. It was a kind of park or esplanade that was nestled among the infrastructure of the city. By bringing cultural, community, and recreation uses into a series of pavilions, you brought the city out onto the waterfront. And by opening up these view corridors, you brought the waterfront into the city, and you allow these cross-grain connections to bring you there. 

C: What potential do you see waterfronts bringing to the East Side? How did you see your work fulfilling this potential? 

G: In a city that’s desperate for open space, here’s a place where you can get out, you can look a mile or two up and down the river and get sunlight. Just opening it up where people feel safe and can walk there and ride their bikes there—it’s huge—the value that that brings to the quality of life of everyone that lives down in that very dense part of town. 

C: What has been the process with the city in developing the waterfront? Who is your client? 

G: Our client is the Economic Development Corporation and the NYC Department of Design and Construction. We worked quite a bit on the logistics of getting it built with the EDC but really on a lot of the design issues with the DDC. They were great clients. I think I did 114 meetings with the city over only the first two years. 

C: How did your meetings with the community affect the design and construction process when you were developing the East River waterfront? 

G: We really talked about how things were working, what was working in the area and what wasn’t working in the area. What were things that could be improved? What were things that community desired? Then we put up this whole overall idea we had and made it work so that it solved some of the community issues. 

C: The panel that you are moderating at the National Academy brings together a very diverse group of professionals to speak about the uptown stretch of the East River waterfront. How do you believe this kind of conversation can improve the area? 

G: If designers aren’t engaged in explaining that to people who do not know enough about design, I think we get horrible spaces and a waste of money. I think architects tend to be a little insular in general so the more broadly you can learn about things, the richer your designs become. It’s always inspiring to look at other kinds of professions. I’m always interested in looking at other professions, their models, how they solve problems. 

C: This panel is a part of CIVITAS’s initiative called Reimagining the Waterfront that has been leading discussions with community members about their experiences with the waterfront. How do you see community-based initiatives affecting the quality of life for these areas? 

G: Getting buy-in [from the community,] getting people to understand what design is and what it does, and how it’s performative, and what it can accomplish, is important for making any space successful. If we’re going to live in dense cities, we have got to have great public space and making great public space requires people to come together and invest in that space and invest in the understandings of how it works and what its effects are. These are extremely important things. 

To read the complete fall 2013 issue of CIVITAS News, visit http://civitasnyc.org/civitas-newsletters/