Sponge Park

Introduces DLANDstudio's pioneering and award-winning Sponge Park concept for the regeneration of the notorious Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn.

The Gowanus Canal is hidden landmark in Brooklyn, New York, and a valuable but latent asset to the local and broader community. Formerly a wetland creek, it is now severely polluted and bordered by industrial buildings and surrounded by residential neighbourhoods. Yet public access to the water's edge is currently limited to streets that dead-end at the water. Since 1999 city and federal agencies addressed certain pollution issues, and recent plans for rezoning of areas adjacent to the water, as well as the increased demand for real estate in this part of Brooklyn, have spurred sporadic private development projects. Although these plans provide access to the waterfront within their immediate sites, they do not present a unified plan for the development of a publicly accessible open space system for the entire canal.

To facilitate greater access and ecological productivity of the Gowanus Canal, the Sponge Park was invented by Brooklyn-based firm DLANDstudio. It is designed as a series of public urban waterfront spaces that slow, absorb, and filter surface water runoff with the intended goal of cleansing the contaminated canal water, activating the canal edge, and communicating a larger vision for stewardship of the environment to a community with many competing voices, agendas, and concerns.

This book presents DLANDstudio's award-winning proposal. It introduces the Sponge Park concept in much detail and heavily illustrated with photos and illustrations, plans, graphics and diagrams. And it demonstrates how a chosen abstract strategy translates into concrete planning and design, community advocacy, and implementation. It is a must read for design students, architects, and academics as well as for elected officials, policy makers, and community activists.

80 colour, 50 b/w illustrations

About the Author

Susannah C. Drake is an Associate Professor at University of Colorado Boulder’s Department of Environmental Design and founding principal of DLANDstudio Architecture + Landscape Architecture in Brooklyn, NY. In 2020 her Gowanus Canal Sponge Park project won the inaugural Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian National Design Award for Climate Action.