Re-imagining Lower Manhattan

After the success of the High Line, New York is ready for more innovative attempts at organizing public space. “Greenwich South,” an area of lower Manhattan crammed between the entrance to the tunnel that runs from downtown to Brooklyn and what was the site of the World Trade Center, is an area in need of some reorganization. Despite being surrounded by bustling lower Manhattan, the 41-acre area is basically a dead zone.

But earlier this week, the Downtown Alliance (the folks behind Re:Construction, which we wrote about in the magazine a while back) released the results of asking several architects and designers to re-imagine the area as a vibrant, essential part of the city. These ideas ranged from a giant, glass-enclosed park over the entrance to the tunnel to creating buildings that mix farms and office space to a new system of street signage (by our friends at Open). While some of the ideas are realistic (like Morphosis’s idea of covering the tunnel entrance in a park—a la Boston’s Rose Kennedy Greenway—pictured above), others are more fanciful (install a video projection of a giant, glowing fireball), but all are interesting ideas on how to revitalize a dormant area of a bustling city. Some favorites are below, see other ideas and read about the whole project here.