The Meadows Reconsidered
Discover This project features three associated projects.
In 1999, PLANT was asked to develop a conceptual master plan for a 20,000-acre area across the Hudson River from Manhattan known as the Hackensack Meadows. The project consists of an overall strategy for the long-term development of this complex area, as well as a series of demonstration projects whose aim is to change peoples’ perception of the place.
The Hackensack Meadowlands is a complex area of open space, highways, rail lines, landfills, mosquito ditches, towns, inter-tidal marshland and wildlife just across the Hudson River from Manhattan. It is a very easy place to get over, but notoriously hard to get into. We were asked to develop a new vision and master plan for this neglected, defaced, and eroded area. There is a long history of battles against marshland infill, development and garbage dumping, attempted preservation and restoration.
Our work here has been about trying to formulate an idea of what this whole place is about. The New Jersey Meadows are a really big place. For us, its overlapping histories – human, ecological, geological – are equally important for generating, interpreting, and enhancing the experience of visitors. It is an urban wilderness.
Our strategy involved a comprehensive reconsideration of the area – one which proposes the complexity be contained within a singularity: We defined the place by its natural and imposed (contemporary industrial) geology – we defined it as a geological basin formed by water. This shaped our political and economic strategy which proposes the whole area become a park – a single cultural idea – which would contain the wildlife alongside the intense man-made texture. Sustainable development is planned within the park, but only as it can reinforce the spatial definition of the place and maintain the health of the place.
The concept plan structures four kinds of projects – ones which define boundaries – with look outs from the edges of the basin, and train blinkers which demarcate and accentuate the moment of entering and exiting of the basin; backbone routes/linkages and paths, which give access TO the park rather than just through it – from major roads and trains, and use utility corridors and abandoned rail lines to give access to canoe launches and beach heads; monuments which capitalize on all the possible opportunities for high panoramic views – really emphasizing the sky in contrast to Manhattan – by giving access to the top of snake hill (real geology) and the garbage hills (new geology), and finally the enhancement of intimate and characteristically Meadows places like the urban wilderness duckblind – a place where every conceivable form of infrastructure co-habitates with a duck population.
We have found opportunities which are afforded because of, not despite the altered landscape: an outrageous number of transportation and utility corridors carve up the space haphazardly yet provide infinite opportunities for access; the plethora and variety of bridges on the Hackensack River are a constant interruption, yet on a very large scale act like thresholds into the rooms of the river and make it more comprehensible; mosquito ditches which have forever altered the character and ecological diversity of the wetlands in places point to fabulous intimate views to far off places like the Empire State Building; the capped garbage hills have filled the marshland, and dirtied the water, but now offer some of the most significant high views, in their differential settlement create entirely new emergent ecologies on their tops, and, finally, are potent monuments to our waste culture.
- A Conversation of Views
- Admiral Road Garden
- Airdrie Road Garden
- Airdrie Road Residence
- Albany Avenue Residence
- Alcina Garden
- Alexandra Park
- Aporia Records
- Asphalt Poetry
- – Poem
- Baby Point Gardens
- Beach Garden
- Beach Village BIA Master Plan
- Beaty Residence
- Bennington Heights Garden
- Berkeley Street Residence
- Bin-Scarth Garden
- Blink and you miss it.
- – Poem
- Block 22 Landscape
- Bloor St. Apartment
- Blue Note
- Booth Avenue Residence
- Boustrophedon Garden
- Braemore Gardens Residence
- Browning Avenue Residence
- Brunswick Avenue Residence
- Camp Arowhon Offices
- Canadian Firefighters Memorial
- Channelled Buried Moved Lost
- Chocolate Loft
- City Instrument
- Clarendon Garden
- Conversation Piece
- Cortleigh Boulevard Garden
- Creemore Farm
- Danforth Mosaic BIA Master Plan
- Dickson Park Garden
- Dilworth Residence
- Don Landing Revitalization
- Dublin Grounds of Remembrance
- Duncanwoods Townhouses
- Dundas Roncesvalles Peace Garden
- Dupont-by-the-Castle BIA
- East Point Bird Sanctuary
- Eglinton Ave Forecourt
- Eglinton Park Master Plan
- Elizabeth Fry Society
- Ellsworth Residence
- Face to Face | Tête à Tête
- First Avenue Garden
- First Avenue Residence
- Flyover Canada
- Foote’s Pond Wood
- Forest Hill Village Streetscape
- Gaze, Glimpse, Glance
- Global Affairs Monument
- Goldring Landscape, University of Toronto
- Gormley Garden
- Governor's Bridge Lookout
- Greener P
- Greer Road Garden
- Greer Road Residence
- Guelph Bridge
- Head in the Clouds
- Helena Ave Residence 4
- Jackman Institute for Childhood Studies
- Junction Craft Brewery
- Kelpies Competition
- Kew Gardens Streetscape
- King's Landing Apartment
- Kipling & Islington Developments
- Lakeport Beach Neighbourhood
- Le jardin du repos
- Lenticular Curtain
- Leslie Slip Lookout Park
- Liberty Village Parkettes
- Liza’s Garden
- Lynwood Garden
- Macroscape
- Makwa Waakaa'igan
- Markham Garden One
- Markham Street Residence Two
- Massey College Landscape Restoration
- Midtown Yonge Streetscape
- Mount Dennis Parkettes
- Mulock Park
- Nathan Phillips Square
- – Streetscape
- – Peace Garden
- – Podium Roof Garden
- Noel Garden
- Octane Medical Campus
- Orchard View Garden
- Osgoode Atkinson Green Competition
- Owl Cottage
- Paperstone Scissors
- Pendrith Residence
- Peripheral Sitings
- Pottery Road Crossing
- rare
- Ravine Forecourt
- Ribbon of the Lower Don
- Riverside BIA Master Plan
- Roxborough Garden One
- Roxborough Garden Two
- Schulich School of Business
- Sheridan College
- – Trafalgar Campus Master Plan
- Spadina Quay Wetland
- St. Anne's Road Garden
- St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts
- Stratford Market Square Competition
- Stratford Patterson Theatre Competition
- Superkids Dental
- Superlegible
- Sweet Farm
- Sweet Farm Pond House
- Swift Medical Offices
- The Meadows Reconsidered
- The Red Sash
- Thick & Thin
- Thistletown II Townhouses
- Tipping Point
- TMU Centre for Urban Innovation
- TMU Science Building
- Tranby Garden
- Tree House Residence
- UBC Okanagan – The Commons
- UHN Tunnels
- University of Toronto Mississauga Welcome Centre
- Venice Biennale 2012
- Vermont Square Park
- Vernon Avenue Garden
- Walk the Walk
- Walmer Road Residence
- Welland Canal Fallen Workers Memorial
- Wellesley Cottages Garden
- Wells Street Residence
- Westminster Residence
- Weston Village BIA Masterplan
- With Words as Their Actions
- Woodlawn Avenue Residence
- Woven Stories
- Wynford Drive Residences
- York Park
- Yorkwoods Townhouses