» Sustainable Design and Alternative Energy

GEE was the ecological designer for the Brooklyn Bridge Park team, led by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, Inc. The park, currently under construction, stretches along 1.3 miles of post-industrial East River waterfront in Brooklyn, New York.

The plan for the 86-acre park includes the establishment of numerous native habitats, including vegetated dunes, coastal forest, shrub land, tidal pools, freshwater wetlands, salt marshes, oyster beds, and an urban successional habitat island. In addition, GEE designed a small coastal forest and recommended the use of cedar stumps as fish breeding habitat in the harbor. A number of the wetlands and upland areas are located upon abandoned shipping piers, requiring novel approaches to ecosystem design.

Project Details:
Year: September 2005-present
Acreage: 85 Acres (1.3 miles of coastline)
Client: Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, Inc., Brooklyn Bridge Park Development Corporation
Location: Brooklyn, NY

As part of one of five-shortlisted international design teams, GEE supported landscape architects Field Operations, in their proposal for a 21st century destination park on Governors Island. The central theme of the proposal was “Mollusk” referencing the historic importance of bivalves in the harbor’s health. The design of the park proposed the creation of extensive intertidal areas replacing the existing seawall and encouraging the development of a healthy bivalve/seaweed community. Click here to view all five submissions.

Project Details:
Year: 2007
Client: Field Operations
Location: New York, NY

The Croton Water Treatment Plant, currently under construction and located underground in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx is designed to be a state-of-the-art water treatment facility that will filter a significant portion of New York City’s drinking water from upstate reservoirs. At a cost of over $3B, this is NYC’s largest infrastructure project.  The extremely large roof surface and excavation depth of the plant create significant excesses of storm and ground water. GEE’s ecologists and designers collaborated with a multidisciplinary team to devise a water management system that treats this excess water on site while using it as an educational and ecological amenity.  The team is designing the U.S.’s largest living roof system (over 9 acres) and a complicated wetland treatment system.

Water will flow through a series of treatment wetland cells that include different habitat types such as emergent marshes planted with native sedges, rushes, and associated wetland species. Shaded areas of the site, created by site security walls and buildings, will host rocky glen habitat features with boulders, ferns, and mosses. These areas will serve to lower temperature and increase dissolved oxygen in the water. After flowing through a series of wetland cells, the water will be held in a large reservoir planted with aquatic species and featuring a blueberry-alder floodplain. Ultimately the water will be used for irrigation of the adjacent golf course.
 

Project Details:
Year: 2007 – Present
Acreage: 74 acres
Client: Hazen and Sawyer Environmental Engineers and Scientists; NYC Department of Environmental Protection
Architect: Grimshaw Architects
Landscape Architect: Ken Smith Landscape Architect
Location: Bronx, NY