Feature Profile
Matthew Urbanski
Taken on September 20, 2010 at Pier 6 by Julienne Schaer
Taken on September 20, 2010 at Pier 6 by Julienne Schaer
As co-lead designer of Brooklyn Bridge Park, Matthew Urbanski was involved from the earliest stages of thinking about how make the best use of available resources to create a memorable and meaningful new park on the vast site. Brooklyn’s relative dearth of park space, particularly in the neighborhoods surrounding the waterfront, meant that it was important to preserve as much of the existing usable surface area as possible.
Matt helped develop a principle of “structural economy” for the site. By identifying ways to reuse existing pier structures while paying particular attention to their structural capacity, the park was designed in a way that simplified engineering solutions and saved money, with lighter-weight plantings and uses located out on the piers, and heavier topography located upland.
At the same time, Matt and the design team looked to the essential materials of landscape architecture—plants and soil—to transform the park site, which had been almost entirely flat and covered in asphalt. The resulting design makes the park an interesting and complex setting for spectacular views of Manhattan, and at the same time helps to shelter visitors from harsh sun, wind, and noise, while dramatically increasing the ecological diversity of the site through the creation of a whole new set of landscape types.
Matt harbors a deep love of plants—he and his father still run a small nursery in New Jersey—and an interest in both the cycle of seasonal change in a landscape and the more gradual cycles of growth that can transform a landscape over decades. While these processes by definition cannot be micromanaged, the Brooklyn Bridge Park design tries to anticipate and welcome them.
Matthew majored in biology as an undergraduate and then studied horticulture for a year before enrolling in the landscape architecture program at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, where he now lectures on plants and ecology. Matthew joined MVVA in 1989 and became a firm principal in 1999. He currently lives in Park Slope with his wife and son.
View our park videos to watch Matthew discuss park design and construction.
Visit Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates website for more about the project.
Michael Van Valkenburgh; photo by Seth Kushner, courtesy of the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership
Michael Van Valkenburgh
As the founding principal of Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates and a lead designer of Brooklyn Bridge Park, Michael has spent countless hours on the site, trying to understand how to turn it into a complex park that accommodates a diversity of activities while also improving connections to the surrounding urban fabric. More than anything else, the design of Brooklyn Bridge Park works in a variety of ways to connect the borough, and indeed the city as a whole, to its watery edges.
Michael says these frequent site visits, both before construction began and as it has proceeded, hammered home just how vast the Brooklyn Bridge Park site can seem, despite its long and narrow dimensions. When one considers the massive piers, the bridges, the Manhattan skyline, the expansive harbor, and even the Statue of Liberty, the experience of Brooklyn Bridge Park is largely one of immense urban artifacts set against a remarkable boundlessness. The recently opened Pier One lays the groundwork for appreciating this breathtaking location, by creating new opportunities for looking, walking, sitting, refreshment, and play.
Michael says that his fondest unrealized dream for the park is the floating platforms that he and Matt Urbanski originally envisioned as connecting the outer edges of Piers One, Two, and Three. When realized, these floating platforms will greatly expand park visitors’ experience of the overall atmosphere of the river’s edge and help create calm water areas for recreational boaters, without adversely impacting the underwater ecosystems beneath them.
Born and raised in upstate New York, Michael began his career as a landscape architect in the mid-1970s, when the reigning Modernist ethos largely divorced the studies of ecology and urbanism. Michael has spent his career trying to shift this paradigm by using landscape architecture to synthesize natural science, engineering, urban planning, and art. At the same, time, he says he has never lost a deep personal interest in how the experiential qualities of landscape can inform and transform people’s daily lives.
Michael has taught at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design since 1982; since 1989 he has been tenured professor, and he has served as the chair of the landscape architecture department. He was the recipient of the 2003 Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award for Environmental Design, and the 2010 Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize in Architecture, from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Michael lives with his wife Caroline in Brooklyn Heights. He is visited frequently by his daughter and two grandchildren, Jack and Grace, who are avid users and critics of their grandfather’s work.
Learn more about Michael's work on Brooklyn Bridge Park here.
Julienne Schaer
Photo of Julienne taken by Skanska employee Charles Russo in the park on June 29, 2009
Julienne Schaer has enthusiastically photographed the park’s construction from the moment work began. Her photos comprise a stunning visual documentary that illustrates the transformation of Brooklyn’s industrial waterfront into a world-class park.
On March 13, 2008, Julienne was on site to capture the start of demolition. She watched as the Port Authority sign was removed from Pier 1, signaling the end of one era and the beginning of another. She continued to photograph the site once a month until the demolition of the sheds was complete.
As the construction phase began, Julienne photographed the Park more frequently, enabling her to capture many of the elements that have gone into creating the park. Julienne’s attention to detail has produced compelling images that showcase the park’s sustainable infrastructure and construction methods as well as the individuals who brought the park to life day by day. Her photographs document the salvaging of Longleaf Yellow Pine from the Cold Storage Warehouse, the installation of the park’s water retention systems, and the construction of dramatic new topography on Pier 1.
As the site was transformed from a civil engineering project to a scenic park, Julienne’s photography adapted to show off the dramatic panoramas of the park.
Julienne’s compelling park photographs reflect her long experience in the field. She specializes in editorial photojournalism and frequently works for NYC & Co. to document celebrations and events, including the Brooklyn Bridge 125th anniversary and the debut of the NYC Waterfalls in 2008. Her first construction experience was to document the renovation of Pier 86, home for the new Intrepid Museum.
She was formerly a forensic photographer for the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, shooting crime scenes and documenting evidence. Julienne received her MFA degree in photography from the Rhode Island School of Design. Julienne lives with her husband and two children in DUMBO.
Since 2005 she has volunteered her photographic skills to the Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy, photographing many events to help with promotion and fundraising. Her continuing work for the BBPDC and the BBPC reveal her passion for the park. We thank her for her time and are honored by her generosity. Her captivating photographs are essential to telling the story of Brooklyn Bridge Park and can be seen throughout the park’s website.
Learn more about Julienne Schaer and view her work at http://www.julienneschaer.com
