Archinect - News

Heatherwick's $260 million elevated river park 'Little Island' opens in NYC

2021-05-20T14:01:00-04:00

Rising from the Hudson River, Little Island preens atop a bouquet of tulip-shaped columns, begging to be posted on Instagram. Outside, it’s eye candy. Inside, a charmer, with killer views.

NYT critic Michael Kimmelman reviews the anticipated elevated river park Little Island (formerly known as Pier 55) which opens on Manhattan's Hudson River bank this week.

Designed by Thomas Heatherwick and Signe Nielsen of NY-based landscape architecture firm MNLA, the $260 million parcel resting on a forest of tulip-shaped concrete pillars had a rocky start and was pronounced dead at some point during years of legal controversy. The now completed attraction impresses with urban green space, river vistas, several new event venues and summer programming atop an engineering feat realized by Arup.

Photo: Michael Grimm.

"I’ve become a Heatherwick skeptic lately, but his contribution here is in the theatrical vein of 18th century English garden follies," Kimmelman writes, adding, "not least because Little Island can remind you more of a private estate than a city park. It’s clearly going to cost a king’s ransom to maintain, a burden the Hudson River Park Trust (which is to say the public...

Aaaand it's back: Heatherwick's Pier 55 happening after all

2017-10-26T13:03:00-04:00

Pier 55, the elaborate $250 million performing arts center on an undulating pier in the Hudson River, is back from the dead. Forty-three days ago, Barry Diller, the entertainment mogul behind the plan, pulled the plug on the project [...] Now, in an agreement brokered by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, Mr. Diller agreed to revive the project, known as “Diller Island,” and opponents who had filed a series of lawsuits to stop the plan agreed to drop their legal battle.

In never-ending-money-and-politics-tale news: "Diller Island," the controversial Pier 55 park structure floating in New York's Hudson River, isn't so dead after all after reports of a Governor Cuomo-brokered agreement between billionaire financier Barry Diller and opponents surfaced yesterday.

"In return, Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, has promised to complete the 4.5-mile-long Hudson River Park," the New York Times writes, "which stretches along the waterfront from Battery Park City to 59th Street and includes Pier 55 at the foot of 14th Street — and to protect the marine estuary from development."

We're holding our breath.

Another Heatherwick project dead, this time New York's Pier 55

2017-09-15T14:47:00-04:00

After years of toe-to-toe battling with a small band of critics and a fellow billionaire, Barry Diller said Wednesday that he was pulling the plug on his family’s commitment to build and operate a $250 million performance center on an undulating pier 186 feet off the Hudson River shoreline.

Back in August, plans for the controversial Thomas Heatherwick-designed Garden Bridge, a pet project of former conservative London mayor Boris Johnson, was scrapped due to the Trust's inability to raise private funds in the absence of public funding. Now, another one of Heatherwick's proposed plans, Pier 55, is getting the boot as well. The project was the vision of American media company IAC chair, Barry Diller. Blueprints for the elevated island park in the Hudson River off Manhattan included a performance venue, an outdoor theater, and a gathering space.

Mr. Diller cited the escalating costs of the project along with the continuing controversy surrounding it as the reasons for the drop. When first proposed, the park was to cost $35 million, but that number eventually increased to over $250 due to legal delays as well as the design's growing complexity. Supporters of the project included the local community board, Governor Cuomo, Mayor Bill de Blasio and Senator Chuck Schumer. On ...

Judge once again stops work at Pier 55 over environmental concerns

2017-03-24T15:14:00-04:00

Judge Lorna G. Schofield agreed with the group’s claim that the Army Corps of Engineers had not conducted a sufficient environmental review on how the 2.4-acre park would affect fish and wildlife. She ordered that work stop at the site and called for a review of alternatives for building along Hudson River Park, a maritime sanctuary.

It's been nearly two years since the City Club of New York first slapped Pier 55, Barry Diller's $200 million offshore park, with a lawsuit. And despite construction starting over the summer, a judge has once again ordered work to stop at the site.

Paul Goldberger on Thomas Heatherwick: "21st-Century Eames"

2016-11-10T19:39:00-05:00

[...] part architect, part furniture designer, part product designer, part researcher, part landscape architect, and part Pied Piper of design, and the things he comes up with manage somehow to be at once charming and brash. [...] shares not only the Eameses’ determination to be wide-ranging but also their fascination with technology, their interest in communication, and, most important of all, their passionate belief in the meaning of actually making things and in using materials in new ways.

Other recent Thomas Heatherwick sightings in the Archinect news:

Why are Heatherwick's proposals succeeding in New York but tanking in London?

2016-05-26T18:25:00-04:00

“The Garden Bridge is a land grab,” says Michael Ball of Thames Central Open Spaces. “That is, a major piece of public space and amenity – the South Bank, the River Thames, and the views across central London – would be sequestered for private interests, albeit cloaked in some appearance of charity and beneficence. When I saw Pier 55 I realised it was an even more blatant example of the same idea.”

In this piece design critic par excellence Alexandra Lange analyzes two similar Thomas Heatherwick designed-projects, London's Garden Bridge and New York's Pier 55, in the hopes of discovering why one seems to be resonating with the public while the other has inspired satiric contests to replace it. Murky funding issues, misleading renderings, Absolutely Fabulous tie-ins: it's all here.

For more on the saga of the Garden Bridge:

Sadiq Khan investigates troublesome details in Thames garden bridge project

2016-05-17T05:34:00-04:00

[Mayor Sadiq Khan] has already begun scrutinising Boris Johnson’s decisions relating to the controversial project, to which £60m of public money has been allocated in circumstances previously criticised by parliamentary spending officials as unorthodox. [...] The proposed bridge has secured vast sums of public money despite being initially promoted as entirely private-funded. It has recently been bedevilled by accusations that its designer was selected before the actual tender process began.

The Guardian also points out that former London Mayor Boris Johnson met with Thomas Heatherwick five times, and is quoted as being "keen" on Heatherwick's design, before the selection process for the bridge's designer even began. Also somewhat worrisome was one of Johnson's last acts before leaving office: lowering the fundraising minimum for the bridge, allegedly to make sure that the project continued.

Related on Archinect:

Construction of Heatherwick + Signe Nielsen-designed Pier 55 to begin this summer

2016-04-29T14:43:00-04:00

Work will go ahead to construct an “elevated island park” in the Hudson River off Manhattan after a judge dismissed a lawsuit from environmental and civic advocates. The $130m park, which has been given the go-ahead by the US Army’s Corps of Engineers, will be based on the Hudson River... Judge Joan Lobis, who threw out the lawsuit, said: “A significant purpose of maintaining event spaces in the park is to generate funds for the ongoing upkeep of the park, which is surely a park purpose.”

Previously on Archinect:

Looking at all sides of the Pier 55 offshore park development

Barry Diller Pledges $130M for Futuristic Offshore Park on the West Side

Looking at all sides of the Pier 55 offshore park development

2015-04-09T20:47:00-04:00

For fans of the park, the gift from the Diller-von Furstenberg foundation represented more than the revival of Pier 54. It was a statement that Hudson River Park deserved to be in the same league as the city’s other signature, showy spaces.

More details -- or opinions, perhaps -- are surfacing for the proposed Pier 55 "culture island", which media mogul Barry Diller commissioned Thomas Heatherwick to design for New York's Hudson River Park. Since the plan was first publicly announced back in November, followed by a lease agreement approved in February, plans to make the $130 million development a reality appear to gradually be moving forward.

Previously