Projects

Within the context of a facility master plan, HMWhite reimagined a barren waterfront industrial sewage treatment plant into a campus design that regenerates its lost Hudson Bay coastal landscape context. Initiated by local residents’ dislike of the plant’s visibility from their apartments and historic Owls Head Park, HMWhite’s comprehensive campus plan introduced a parkway landscape design to buffer building visibility with a robust and sculptural landscape public face. Native Holly hedgerows along its Shore Parkway edge were lay­ered on an elevated landscape corridor to visually screen and secure the plant from its residential neighborhood. An entry gate arrival sequence, adorned with an arrival court, staff and visitors are guided toward shaded parking “rooms” oriented toward building entrance. The entry court established a facility front door and dually functions as a social commons for daily and special events. The barren rip rap shoreline was transformed into an educational coastal native garden. Each of these coordinated campus landscape interventions erased the plant’s former faceless asphalt paved environment and shifts its public image to a visually coherent coastal landscape within which an industrial plant has been inserted. The matrix of bio-diverse plant communities successfully mini­mize landscape management requirements and deliberately regenerate coastal wildlife habitats.

Owls Head

Brooklyn, New York

Client:

NYC Department of Environmental Protection

Design Team:

Landscape Architect: HMWhite
Architect: Ehrenkrantz Ecktsut & Kuhn
Civil Engineer: Metcalf & Eddy, Inc.

AWARDS:

1996
Concrete Industry Board Honor Award

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