Greenport Waterfront Competition

Project List: -------- Sheffield Festival Centre -------- Scion Showroom -------- Mikvah -------- Officeware -------- Libsa Lofts -------- Ideal Office -------- Jusco -------- Max Studio -------- IBM e-business Centers -------- Design Office 2 -------- Max House -------- Masquerade Films/ Benard+Pearson Loft -------- Nettwerk Productions -------- Virgin Digital/ Lost Boys Studios -------- Shin-Yokohama Clock Competition -------- Greeenport Waterfront --------

Project: Greenport Waterfront Competition
Location: Greenport, Long Island, New York
Description: 3 acre public park

FIRST, COVER THE WHOLE PLACE WITH ONE HUGE DECK. Wood decking, a material with positive associations with waterfront promenades, piers and the tectonics of shipbuilding, is the primary ordering feature which unifies the site. 2D to 3D to 4D. 2D: the horizontal surface of the deck mimics the datum of sea level while attenuating the edge condition between land and water. 3D: the horizontal surface is displaced, folded, tilted, and cut to provide for different programmatic uses. 4D: the daily and seasonal cycles of transformation of the sea are reflected and accommodated.

THE DECK MOVES. Natural changes are reflected in the site through the creation of a kinetic topography which when read, represents both the cosmological characteristics of the area, as well as embodying many of the programmatic features of Long Island on a single site. This strategy creates a landscape where the phenomenon of relations are constantly reconfigured in accordance with prevailing environmental conditions and natural processes.

THE DECK REVEALS A NEW VILLAGE PLACE. Formally, the physical and conceptual datum of the ground is used to both unify the different parts of the project as well as to allow for the reading of objects or forces that stand in contradistinction to it. This conceptual datum is fluid, however, and does not resist the entropy of nature but instead embraces the idea of constant change as datum. Similarly, the physical datum of the deck illustrates its suppleness and flexibility at accommodating and absorbing various conditions and programs into its physical plane, and in doing so creating many planes and possible uses.