Williamsburg Bridge Park

Ji Hyun Yoo, Student ASLA

Harvard University Graduate School of Design, Cambridge, Massachusetts

Faculty Advisors: Craig Verzone, International ASLA; Charlie Cannon

"Taking surface parking adjacent to the approach and making it a green space is an ingenious capture of lost space in the urban fabric. Well done!"

— 2008 Student Awards Jury Comments

Project Statement:

The Williamsburg Bridge Park project addresses the potential of a huge abandoned space that has not been noticed in the urban context and the potential of infrastructure not as a barrier but as a bridging system which connects neighborhoods and open spaces. It also explores the possibility of infrastructure as an environmental instrument which purifies the polluted run off, attenuates noise associate with the infrastructure and creates renewable energy.

Project Narrative:

I focused on the Williamsburg Bridge in the Lower East Side of Manhattan New York, as an infrastructure that not only links Manhattan to Brooklyn, but also connects the neighborhood to the East River Park. The area near the Essex St - Delancey St station is the neighborhood center of the Lower East Side in which a lot of cultural amenities are located. However, Delancey, which connects the neighborhood center and the East River Park, is rather underutilized and desolate because of the huge structure of the Williamsburg Bridge. Therefore, I paid attention to the potential of the abandoned space under the infrastructure as “a bridge” that connects the neighborhood to the open space and connects the neighborhoods which were blocked by the bridge.

This site has several opportunities. The size of the huge abandoned space under the bridge is 100 ft wide 78 ft high at the highest part and the Delancey itself is 260 ft wide. Street traffic is low and the street is occupied by street parking because Delancey does not directly connect to the major FDR highway near it. Also, the site has adjacent available spaces.

The idea of this project is to move the existing street parking to a hanging parking lot underneath the bridge using a robotic parking system and to create open space under the bridge. This robotic parking also includes changing the adjacent existing parking lots into open spaces.

The spatial strategy is first to make a structured space under the bridge utilizing and adjusting the bridge structure to allow the other space to remain open. Second, to split the structure to allow for the streets to continue. Third, to link the major open spaces with a pedestrian pathway.