Columbia St Bikeway Art Finally Complete!

Delayed satisfaction is a fact of life for most landscape architects. You may work on a project for years and then it takes years to get built. And the with the speed at which designers change firms, many people often do not get to see projects through to the end. But I was lucky during my six years at Mathews Nielsen Landscape Architects to see many projects from design to completion.

But there were a few dangling projects at my departure that I have watched with anticipation. Columbia St. Bikeway was one of those projects. The bikeway itself, the first 1/4 mile of the Brooklyn Greenway, had been completed years ago. It was a standard bikeway in many respects but its adjacent streetscape was designed to emphasize the speed and rhythm of cycling with the addition of a salvaged cobble band  (uncovered during adjacent sewer reconstruction) patterned with bright pink granite. The brightness of the pink was hotly contested, but once it was installed and covered in a layer of grime, it would have had to have been neon pink to really stand out as intended. The trees were alternating groups with yellow flowers or yellow spring leaves to provide continuity as well as diversity. Care was taken to provide larger soil area in this harsh environment. Structural soil and continuous tree pits were used throughout.

newly installed salvaged cobbles and cut pink granite. the texture difference is more noticeable than the color.

But the dangling project in question was the Percent for Art component where 1% of the budget is put towards public art. The artist Nobuho Nagasawa was chosen by the community and I worked closely with her throughout the project to integrate her artwork into the larger streetscape. This included a lot of meetings and multiple presentations to the Design Commission. Nobuho had many interesting ideas for the streetscape but settled in the end on one of her first and clearest ideas; she wanted to trace the shadows of native New York trees that we would hand-pick for the streetscape and etch them in bluestone. So when the tree was large there would be a memory of when the tree was small. Nobohu got to know the community very well and carefully chose locations that were significant.

The design, now called TIMECAST, was finally approved by the Design Commission and won an award in 2007. But the installation timing was tricky. To be truly authentic, the traces were to be made in situ, so the streetscape and trees needed to be installed before the artwork could be created. So we had to add asphalt patches in the streetscape that could be easily removed once the artwork was complete. And of course there were mishaps. Con-Ed boxes and fire hydrants getting installed in art locations, etc. But I left to go to Harvard in 2009 and did not get to see the artwork installed. It was not until this past Spring 2012 that they were finally finished. I was here in Spain when I got the email from the artist telling me that it was complete!

I'm very happy to see that this white swamp oak is doing so well! It was a beautiful tree when we selected it at the nursery

One sad street tree died before its artwork could be installed so this one truly is a memorial.

I was really excited to see that other people are enjoying the artwork. Photographer Tom Rupolo did a very nice series of detailed photographs of the etchings. He kindly gave me permission to post.

 Many thanks to Joe Sopiak from DDC and Susan Chin, Victoria, and Xenia from DCA that made the long process and number of meetings bearable. I really had a great time working with all of them. And many thanks to Signe Nielsen and Nobohu Nagasawa for their unwavering dedication to the project throughout its 8 year duration!

For more information see the following links
http://www.brooklyngreenway.org/columbia-watefront-public-art-dedication-timecast-by-nobuho-nagasawa/
http://blog.archpaper.com/wordpress/archives/39487
dedication video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wp6ta263i8I