Location: Freshkills, NY. Architect/Designer: ARKE Design Team: Elcin Ertugrul, Katherine L. Moya, Carlos Alegria, Joaquin E. Boldrini Year: 2012
Our submission to Fresh Kills Park international competition recognizes the park's fragile connotation and character. The park is perceived as a crystal-likeplace for any physical intervention, like a balloon close to a needle, it requires a surgical or gentle approach. The thick layered condition of its soil, waste, soil, becomes a generator of layers that accumulate over time giving insights of what should be expressed by our proposal.
The proposal aims to add a new soft layer of energy/wild life support that brings life into the site over the existent condition and fulfilling the broken ecosystem cycle that was in place pre-landfill times. CloudFields is conceived as a living device in it-self, evolutionary per-se, a living sculpture instead of an object sculpture. The main purpose of the project is to restore the historic and original condition of the place, developing organic and sustainable skins on each of the cloud types, from solar applications to green layered skins with the aim to understand the sustainability on its holistic approach not only energy driven but even most important is to be engaged with the wild-life and ecosystem in all levels, where the fields are irrigated with organic matter that enriches the soil and therefore builds over time a new ecosystem that will reach its former maturity.
We proposed 3 types of clouds addressing the programs that will support all the activities to occur at the park, from energy to wild-life specific, the Blue Cloud (solar energy – Large size), the Green Cloud (wild-life – Medium size), the White Cloud (shade activities – small size); these 3 devices would produce a synergy of events that will bring life to the project and turn it into an attraction.
