Queens West - Dense Suburbanism

As I begin orchestrating a move after two years of living in Long Island City, I want to dedicate a bit of blog time to the ever-changing neighborhood which more and more residents are attempting to make a home of. I have long held mixed feelings about the developments going on along the river, but the focus today is on a recent one, nearly complete in construction which has broken any sense of order in the urban fabric that the previous towers have attempted to abide by. My street now ends in a 10' tall metal fence.

Ironically, the name of the offending development is The View (http://www.queenswest.com/maps/condos_coops/rockrose-condos), and it first caught my attention in early stages of construction when it's massing slowly grew to block a formerly direct and framed view of the United Nations building across the East river from my street (46th Road). It was these lines of sight directly back to Manhattan which had originally attracted me to the still fairly industrial community.


Other towers growing along the coast in the past 15 or so years all managed to abide by some sense of urbanism. The other buildings are oriented so their wide facades face the North and the South, intelligent for maximizing daylight and minimizing heat gain in this climate. Urbanistically, this creates less major shadows on the existing neighborhood, view corridors are preserved, sidewalks at street level remain defined with commercial use where feasible, and open space is left along the water, where it enhances the Gantry Park and will someday be connected north and south to a system of East River coast park spaces from Brooklyn up to the Queensboro Bridge and beyond.

Some shots of maintained view corridors to Manhattan with the previous developments:



"The View", however demonstrates a departure from all of these basic principles. The building is massive, with the bulk of exposure being East and West to maximize views with no obvious concern for shadowing excessive parts of the neighborhood, or internally saving energy which will be required to maintain comfortable temperatures in the predominantly glass housing units. The site planning around the building is even more unfortunate, as a baseball field has been built directly east of the building, where it extends beyond the street grid, forcing 46th Road to end premature of the water and abruptly with a tall fence.


Living in an urban area, and having programmed baseball fields into dense residential greenways, I understand the both the need for such sport facilities and the challenge of finding the space for such, but the siting here is preposterous for several reasons. First, the field will be completely in the shadow of the adjacent buildings for most of the day (particularly after the construction site across the street is also developed). The siting and size destroys the urban fabric by not conforming to the established street grid, leaving the future development of 46th Road to loading and manufacturing rather than encouraging further small scale residential and commercial when the current industrial uses run their course. The fence along the field makes an unwelcoming edge which breaks down the continuation of 5th Street which will be an important corridor when the coast continues development north towards the Silver Cup site at the 59th Street Bridge. The lack of windowed facades facing this portion of the street cause it to feel unsafe in the evenings for pedestrians despite it's proximity (1 block north) to the newly opened residential amenities of a grocery store and pharmacy.


I find it entirely unfortunate that the siting for this development was not better though through. The land was clearly already owned, and a simple siting switch of building and field space could have allowed the community east of this building to continue to grow productively, and given the field to the coastal park, where it could be more of an open and public amenity, rather than a gated intrusion destroying public access to the river and blocking the view which reminds residents of Long Island City's best feature - its proximity to Manhattan.

This development re-emphasizes 46th Road as an edge, the end of residential Long Island City. North of 46th Road, even Vernon Boulevard becomes sparse and inconsistent. A great opportunity to reconnect the old neighborhood with the new has been missed, and with such planning practices as employed at "The View", it seems that the outlying areas will remain neglected - the backs of new development turned upon them and the broad sides of new massing blocking visual connections to Manhattan.


The last new commercial effort on Vernon Blvd. before 46th Road, beyond which taxi repair facilities and industrial warehouses take over amongst scattered residential.

Restoring Habitats

On Friday, I spent a day of work at Co-op City, assisting in the direction of planting 201 trees. It was a great experience to work with the grounds crew and see the planting. Also impressive was spending some time on this greenway, which was a parking lot only 1.5 years ago. The progress of the space's transformation and growth of the plants we had specified was impressive and brought a much greater respect for the work I have been doing in landscape architecture. For once I could see that the things that I have been familiar with staring at on paper and computer screens have taken shape forming and beautifying a space.

The experience was brought to a deeper level when I returned from my lunch break before the grounds crew had resumed their work and started their machines. I went to sit on a bench in the sun and heard a bird singing loud and happy from the clump of bagged trees dropped off by the truck earlier, waiting to be planted. Walking quietly over to inspect, I found the bird, happily nested among branches of young Hawthorn trees. The day was no longer about counting trees and measuring space, and checking planting specifications at that point, instead it was providing 201 new spots for birds (and insects and hundreds of other species) to call home in the Bronx.



The foliage of the Hornbeams planted a year ago was pretty stunning in the morning light. It will be great to when the trees are a little bigger.




For better or for worse, I kept finding interesting (and often beautiful) small weeds among the newly hydroseeded landscape. Hopefully the grass will eventually establish itself this well.

Delaware Water Gap

Bit of nature taken in over the weekend.. Foliage by the New Jersey - Pennsylvania border.




Sometimes trees outside the city have a tough time too..

Personal Statement

Up for comment/suggestions/criticism -

I am best described as an interdisciplinary architectural designer most interested in the social and ecological implications of urbanism and the built environment. My professional experiences have taught me how the convergence of design with global perspectives and fields such as sociology and ecology can intensify the richness and integrity of a problem solution. It is my professional goal to employ and develop practices of ecological planning to globally better cities through sustainable design.

Where I grew up, neighbors exchanged homegrown harvests of tomatoes, corn, squash, grapes, and various other items. Overgrown roadside ditches held and conveyed excess storm water until it could infiltrate back into the land with time. These minor institutions show a latent sustainability and help to create a societal connection to nature. This human connection to nature is one I took for granted before moving from rural North Carolina to the cities of Boston, MA, and then to New York, NY where I reside today. Working in urban architecture and landscape architecture and being exposed to the municipal agencies who strive to maintain one of the world’s greatest cities, I am reminded each day of the severe disconnect between urban life and the forgotten natural ecologies struggling to persist in cities.

Studying architecture within a program that focused on the recognition and analysis of the urban environment broadened my perspective to seek inspiration in landscape architecture and sociological thought. By the time I entered graduate school, my degree was a Masters of Architecture, but my thesis project began with the social implications of urban park space from historic through contemporary times. In researching my thesis I came across a well-established premise in landscape architecture and urban design derived from Transcendentalism which has continued with me - within a natural setting, people can come together on an equal ground - regardless of race, gender, or other societal constraints. In considering the degradation of nature, the state of the earth’s environment, and questions of human equality in the midst of globalization, I am struck by a necessity as a design professional to look back to nature and extract ecological knowledge capable of informing architecture.

I was the first member of my family to have the opportunity to travel abroad. I have long held a fascination with new cultures and languages, so worked hard through college to save money to fund short trips and eventually to spend a semester abroad. I have studied German among internationals in Dresden and tutored English in New York, learning in both cases to step back from situations and observe without presuppositions to comprehend cultural variations. My interactions across cultural boundaries have taught me the duality of culture - as one learns from others, one also becomes more aware of himself. Further, having found travel to provide a unique understanding of the architecture and urban design field, I consistently strive to experience more of the world’s historic and contemporary built environment, to better inform projects of my own.

The Lesson of Peat and Fungal Gnats

In the midst of a small amount of rage, and as a bit of a public service announcement, I just wanted to share my new findings on pests which threaten the indoor urban gardener. Having recently tossed a young basil plant, soon followed by a young rosemary plant which I found withering and swarming with small flying insects, I did some further research. What I found was a too common species known as the Fungal Gnat. They're slightly smaller than your typical fruit fly and particularly enjoy potted plants.

Apparently the adult fungal gnat itself is not particularly harmful to plants, but their larvae are quite destructive. The gnats lay eggs in soil, particularly soil that is moist. They can lay hundreds of eggs which hatch quickly into larvae. The larvae thrive in the moist soil and attack plants at their roots for nutrients. On top of this, fungal gnats are known to spread diseases from other plants.

I've been annoyed by the flying insects because they were sticking around even after I had tossed all of the potted plants in my apartment, and throughly washed everything down. Granted there were only a couple here or there, but realizing they were not going away I started wondering both what they are and where they might be still living. Upon reading about the larvae in moist soils, I remembered that the large bag of potting soil I had bought (which I used when I repotted both the basil and the rosemary shortly before their downfall) was still loosely sealed under my kitchen sink. In my internet research readings I had seen warnings against using topsoil containing peat, which apparently these (and other pests) are particularly fond of.

Upon inspection, the bag of soil under my sink was teeming with several of the gnats around the opening. I picked the bag up, and quickly saw that the soil mix was one of peat moss with added nutrients for plants. I ended up tossing the entire bag of soil, and vowing never to return to the tiny hardware store up the street who had convinced me to buy the mixture..

So, that is my warning for anyone attempting to grow young plants - beware of soil mixtures containing peat, don't overwater, and act quickly if you ever see gnat like insects around your plants!

I'm starting out some cilantro from seeds in a different soil mixture this week, will see if the results prove better than the first try with herbs!

Chinatown Park - Boston

This labor day, I stumbled around a very deserted financial district of Boston during a layover between modes of transportation heading back to NY. During the hour I was struck by the complete quiet and lack of pedestrians in the area around South Station even though it was a national holiday. Heading towards the gate to Chinatown, I was pleasantly surprised to find life just at the border of one of widest expanses of asphalt still remaining since the big dig. This little park is the Chinatown park by Carol R. Johnson Associates (more here http://www.masspike.com/bigdig/parks/chinatownpk.html ).

I realized a fundamental difference between photographing architecture and landscape architecture in this - with landscape, you actually want to show people using the space. It was great to see that groups of people dotted the green spot despite the rest of the downtown being empty.