OnePrize Winner: NY Parallel Networks

One winning project and three Honorable Mentions have recently been announced in the ONE PRIZE: Water as the 6th Borough competition (previously on Bustler). The first prize in this international ideas competition went to the entry NY Parallel Networks by Ali Fard and Ghazal Jafari from Canada.

Here is the winning concept in detail:

Project Description from the Architects:

New York's relationship with water has been essential to its historical development and growth. Traditionally, water for New York has been a source of connectivity and large scale economic, and industrial activities, which have slowly transformed the once diverse water's edge with mono-functional industrial hardscapes. Currently, migration of industrial activities outside the city, coupled with increase in water's edge development and awareness of environmental threats, have created a potential for re-imagining a resilient, yet productive, waterscape capable of hosting a diversity of urban programming. The Blue Network initiative and Clean Tech World Expo present fruitful venues for extending NY's blue footprint through a rethinking of the role of water in the overall health of the city. Hence, as well as providing a connective tissue between the 5 boroughs, The Blue Network needs to be imagined as a productive landscape able to deal with flux and to regenerate a socially and environmentally sustainable body of water.

New York City, like many other metropolitan areas, is founded in a context that is environmentally and socially in a constant flux. Mono-functional infrastructures have proven incapable of effectively adapting to these fast and complex changes. Therefore, The Blue Network needs to take into account not only transportation needs but also urban growth and environmental factors, through coupling or bundling of transportation infrastructure with water-based urban programming (for production, recreation, living, etc.), and new waterscapes(for environmental protection, research, re-habitation, etc.). This proposal exists at the intersection of the basic needs of The Blue Network, such as fuel and maintenance, and urban programming and new waterscapes.

As The Blue Network is a large infrastructural project, a systematic thinking, instead of an all-encompassing super-structural remedy, can effectively enhance the performative qualities of the network. In this proposal this systematic thinking is manifested through a cellular infrastructure. This cellular system allows for incremental implementation by various public and private entities, while allowing for easy maintenance, since each cell can be removed and repaired without jeopardizing the overall health of the network. The cells of the Blue Network are translated to floating pods of various scales and functions, able to accumulate and disband, and to be moved from one location to another. This system, therefore, promotes a need-based growth over time, allowing for opportunities for experiments, while keeping the integrity of the network intact. Furthermore, pods are designed to forge symbiotic relationships with the context they are located in.

Two test sites are introduced for a more detailed examination of the network. NY Gaia, located in Upper New York Bay, is a productive landmark, and a center for clean energy production and marine transportation maintenance activities. The Gaia will feed other cleantech industries with energy, through wind power and bio-fuel harvested from large scale algae cultivation. In addition, much needed maintenance and training spaces for marine transportation will be located adjacent to reef islands which will be grown over time.

Bronx Blue Terminal (BBT), located at the mouth of Bronx River and with strategic adjacency to Bronx Electric Car City, will provide Bronx area with a ferry terminal. In addition to a transit hub, BBT will act as a recreation, research and education node within the Blue network, building on the educational programs already underway in the area. Habitat preservation and regeneration is another part of the mandate for BBT.

Find more concept diagrams in the image gallery below.