MEMBERS: Alexandra Ramirez

Yuri Birchwood

Stephen Bonitch

Proposal: To create an open space where people can gather and view the city without any visual disruptions from the structures that exist within the city and those which will support the bridge itself. To create a space where individuals can go view the shorelines of Manhattan , Brooklyn , and New Jersey from a neutral zone.

Process: Seeing as how the goal of the project was to create an open space we decided to analyze parks that exist around Cooper Union and there relationship to the city. The parks chosen were Washington Square Park , Tompkins Park , and Union Square Park.

We felt that parks were the perfect areas to look at because they are gathering places for large sums of people and are places where people go get away from the city , even though they are still in it. Do to the distance that are between the parks we felt that a connection could be made to the parks by using the grid lines that extended there way to each location basically creating a block of it’s own. Our next step was to displace this block to a new location where city would not engulf the new site but would allow the site to take in the powerful landscape of the city. This was a major focus because we wanted to provide a full view of the city and not just the glimpses that one usually gets when they are in a park.

Displacement: The displacement of the park allows for a new perception of and from public space. The park allows for an uninterrupted view of the city. While the form of the park is generated by public space and fabric , it isn’t contained by the fabric of the city. The park becomes " no – place" or utopia. The fact that the park lies in the middle of the bridge creates a new program for the bridge. The bridge is no longer to be transgressed over, but rather a means of accessing the new public space. One might never use the bridge to travel from Manhattan to Brooklyn ; however the bridge serves a s a tie between two boroughs , the link to "no – place".

The Park: Within the park it was extremely important to set up a system at which the park would be designed. After evaluating the various grid patterns in New York City , we chose to investigate the cardinal points. Often the people of New York City refer to north & south with the avenues and east & west with streets. As a result of the displacement of the park we decided to establish our design based on the cardinal points so that an individual at the park could have a reference as to where or what location they were looking at.

Within the park we also attempted to diverge from the initial plane , breaking the datum with varying levels. The goal of the level changes was to give the people an opportunity to circulate through the park more dynamically while allowing the perspectives of the city to change as well. Unlike the parks analyzed because the individual is given the freedom to change views " the park" does become an open space . In the design, it was crucial to UN-interrupt any views a person may seek.

Therefore , it became relevant to move any structure away from the park or underneath it. Some of the facilities on the park will include handball courts , basket ball courts, tennis courts , restrooms , facilities for emergency care and the periphery will serve as a jogging and sightseeing are.

Structure: The structure consist of four towers that are approximately 350-400 ft of height . At the center of the 1400 ft span lies the park whose width in the northern tip is 150 ‘ and on the southern tip is 240’ wide by a length of 620’. There are a system of cables that run through the towers and anchor into the docks that exist on both shorelines

providing tensile forces capable of sustaining the load of the bridge. On the area underneath the platform the cables will function under post –tension so that as the platform rest on the cables the load can carried to the towers and into the land.