When superstorm Sandy wreaked havoc around New York Harbor, Governors Island was largely spared, in large part because construction of a new park had involved both adding elevation and installing proper drainage. “I’m glad my landscape architect is Dutch,” says Leslie Koch, president of the Trust for Governors Island, referring to Adriaan Geuze, the principal of Rotterdam-based West 8. That firm, chosen in a 2007 competition (as part of a team that included Mathews Nielsen Landscape Architects, Pentagram, Tillotson Design Associates, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, and Rogers Marvel) has been transforming much of the 172-acre island into parkland. Now 30 acres of that park are set to open on Saturday, and the island that weathered Sandy will face the onslaught of public opinion.
Most of the reviews should be glowing. Geuze, best known to Americans for a park overshadowed by Frank Gehry’s New World Symphony building in Miami, has transformed the dot on Manhattan’s exclamation point. Twenty-six buildings (many banal vestiges of a coast guard station) have been leveled, and 2,200 parking spaces have been eliminated; that left lots of open space, much of which is now grass and shrubs. The demolition also created rubble from which Geuze has created hillocks that provide topographic variety, in some cases even blocking views of the Statue of Liberty. “The statue,” Koch explains of the scheme, “isn’t as interesting if you see at all the time.”
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