News | BKSK Architects

March 26, 2020

Battery Playscape Receives ASLA-NY Design Award

The Battery Playscape, which broke ground earlier this month, has been recognized by the American Society of Landscape Architects, New York (ASLA-NY) as a recipient of a 2020 Design Award. The project is in collaboration with The Battery Conservancy, Starr Whitehouse Landscape Architects & Planners, and the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation. The Design Awards bolster local visibility, acknowledge and promote the work of the Chapter’s membership, and publicly recognize excellence in the practice of landscape architecture.

The winning projects exemplify design excellence with a focus on resilient design strategies and innovative use of materials to provide effective solutions to challenging sites. Another highlight of several projects is the inclusion of community, who were engaged from the beginning and involved throughout the design process resulting in high quality public places that put the users first.

The Playscape is an intentionally flexible framework that supports open-ended play informed by the local ecology. As children traverse the playground’s 1.5 acres, they will experience a freeing, plant-filled spaciousness that is uncommon for many city-dwellers.

The ecological story begins with The Battery’s location at the prow of Manhattan where the Hudson River meets New York Harbor. Created by successive landfills over several centuries, much of the park, including the playground, is low-lying land, vulnerable to storm surge, high winds, and in-land flooding. The project will tangibly demonstrate how the best practices of resilient design can offer a rich play experience – one that deeply connects children to natural elements and the realities of climate change, while expanding their creative capacity.

Congratulations to all of this year’s winners. Read the official press release.

March 16, 2020

Two BKSK Projects Win 2019 Brick in Architecture Awards

Two of our multifamily projects received 2019 Brick in Architecture awards– 175 West 10th Street and Henry Hall!

Henry Hall, located in Hudson Yards is a building designed to be of New York; inclusive and welcoming, blending the public and private into a unified whole. Drawing design inspiration from masonry stables and tunnel ventilation towers that remain visible on the area’s fringes, the use of brick was essential to the vision of the project as an expression of a vanishing context in a contemporary language.

At 175 West 10th Street in the West Village, The facade’s brick frame was laid up in a conventional fashion and the brownstone, metal trim and windows were a single unitized insert panel fabricated off site. The brick is sand molded which offers a an irregularity that brings individuality and character, with a deliberately deep, rich red tone that was chosen to recall the traditional brick of the neighborhood often seen in contrast with brownstone.

Congratulations to all of this year’s winners! Read the official announcement and view a gallery of this year’s award winners.

March 11, 2020

Battery Playscape Featured in the Wall Street Journal

Battery Playscape, the climate-change resilient playground we are designing in the Battery in collaboration with Starr Whitehouse and the Battery Conservancy is featured in the Wall Street Journal- New Playground in Manhattan’s Battery Will Be Climate-Change Resilient.

Full article below by Amber Burton.

Construction workers work on excavation of the bluffs for a new playground in Battery Park.

The conservancy that oversees the Battery in Lower Manhattan will break ground on one of the largest climate-change-resilient playgrounds in New York City on Thursday.

The goal for the new $18.3 million playground, which is being called the “Battery Playscape,” is to be one of the most green and sustainable parks in New York City, according to Battery Conservancy officials.

The 1.5-acre playground will be built within the 25-acre Battery Park, which is located in a flood zone at the southern tip of Manhattan.

In 2012 Superstorm Sandy flooded and damaged a previous playground and other parts of the Battery. After the flooding, the playground was leveled, but later restored. However, the conservancy wanted a new play space that could stand up to heavy rains and storms.

“It will be a model for waterfront parks, a way to embrace resilient design and adapt to climate change,” New York City Parks Department Commissioner Mitchell Silver said of the playground.

Visitors from Chicago ride the Seaglass Carousel in Battery Park.

The Parks Department plans to use the resiliency designs for the Battery play space on playgrounds around the city, including East River Park, which will soon be renovated, Mr. Silver said.

Federal and city funds are paying for the Battery Playscape. It is expected to open in spring 2021.

The playground will be divided into five geographic zones for children to play: the bluff, marsh, dune, riverbed and meadow. Many of its features will be built above sea level. Underground basins will take on excess water, preventing flooding into the city’s sewer system. All of the plants for the playground were also chosen to resist erosion.

Battery Conservancy President Warrie Price said that the best time for children to visit the play space will be after rainfall, as many of the playground’s features will absorb or recycle the water for the children’s water-play area.

The playground’s design team also chose flood-resistant materials like granite and stone, and most of the surface of the park is permeable. Ms. Price said the new playground will be able to withstand future storms.

“What we’ve built is going to be able to recover,” she said.

February 21, 2020

The Lambaye Learning Center Officially Opens!

On February 18, 2020, The new Lambaye Learning Center in Senegal held its official opening ceremony. Villagers welcomed Amary Seck, the founder of the Center, an inspiring high school chemistry professor at Mamaroneck High School who is originally from Lambaye, an energetic group of his current and former students working under the name Students for Senegal, the design team from BKSK, furniture designer Bibi Seck and their guests.

The Center kicked off with a long celebration that went well into the night. It included dancing, singing, poetry and remarkable speeches from the community. We are so proud that the Center is fully operational, already holding classes, and will provide ongoing opportunities to engage with the Village.

The 4,000 sf community Library and Learning Center supports educational programs for Lambaye villagers of all ages. It features a two-story reading room, a stage for performances (where the opening ceremony was held), workshop and lecture spaces, a computer lab, a shop, and a flexible central courtyard. The Center will be led by director Assane Fall, who has a degree in Library Science.

“Home in Lenapehoking” Tammany Hall and the Lenape Center featured in Urban Omnibus

The Architectural League of New York’s Urban Omnibus features our collaboration with the Lenape Center in their most recent issue. The editors spoke with Joe Baker and Hadrien Coumans, the Lenape Center’s co-founders and co-directors about their efforts to bring the original peoples and their culture back home in the 21st century.

Check out our concept for a Lenape Center home in Manhattan’s Inwood Hill Park. Read the full interview, which also highlights our work with the Center on the turtle shell dome at Tammany Hall.

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Urban Omnibus: What could that civic understanding look like here? You recently worked with the architects of the renovation of Tammany Hall on a new dome for the building.⁣ ⁣⁣
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Hadrien Coumans: Tammany Hall is an example of how an architectural firm has, from the beginning, done everything in the best way to bring out a sense of recognition and place of honoring the original people. I credit Todd Poisson for having led the most thoughtful effort to include the Lenape every step of the way. We’re very happy with the glass turtle dome roof, and it’s rare to have an example in the city of thorough consultation that resulted in something that is really a new landmark. Tammany Hall, as a political organization, did not care for the well-being of the Lenape, and was using a romanticized notion of a chief. It’s exciting to have an architectural firm realize the misappropriation of this name historically, but also see that there is an opportunity to bring in authentic, legitimate voice and representation into the story. That’s more exciting than a monument — that’s actually creating change.⁣ ⁣
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Read the full story

The Lenape Center was established in 2008 with the mission of continuing Lenapehoking. The organization’s work has taken various forms, from staging an opera on the purchase of Manhattan, to consulting with BKSK Architects on Tammany Hall’s new turtle shell-inspired dome, and planting indigenous corn in the city’s community gardens. They also partner with other organizations seeking to promote the living culture of the Lenape.

Read the full story

January 16, 2020

Queens Botanical Garden Visitor & Administration Center Featured in AIA NY | Center for Architecture Exhibition

The Queens Botanical Garden Visitor & Administration Center will be featured in the upcoming AIA NY | Center for Architecture Exhibition: Public Works: Reflecting on 15 Years of Project Excellence for New York City.

From libraries to firehouses to police precincts, the NYC Department of Design and Construction (DDC) builds and upgrades structures in every part of New York City. As the City’s chief construction manager, the agency delivers high-quality public projects that contribute to a thriving, equitable, sustainable, and resilient city for all New Yorkers.

Since 2004, DDC has made a formal commitment to pursue an ambitious public works program in partnership with a diverse group of creative and experienced design and construction professionals. Reflecting on this program over the past 15 years, the exhibition will highlight projects by world-class architects and designers that serve the residents of New York, inspiring pride as lasting community assets. A focused look at selected projects will consider how DDC creates enduring, accessible, and community-oriented spaces that shape the city.

The Queens Botanical Garden is a nexus of botanical and cultural exploration for the most ethnically diverse neighborhood in the United States, Queens County. The new Visitor & Administration Center is a built extension of the Garden’s mission: to demonstrate environmental stewardship while celebrating the cultural connections between people and plants. To that end, the Visitors’ Center is LEED® Platinum certified, a first for a public building in New York City. From the inception of the project, principles of sustainability led the design process. Water, a natural element significant to all cultures, is re-introduced throughout the site, unifying building and landscape.

The opening reception is Thursday, January 16 at 6pm and the exhibition is on view through April 4, 2020.

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