New City Tissue: reimagining the Brooklyn Bridge
Design competition from the Van Alen Institute of New York,
with Tucker Viemeister
Amsterdam, July 2020
The Brooklyn Bridge is one of New York’s most recognizable landmarks, and holds a special place in our collective imagination. Since opening on May 24, 1883, the bridge has taken on near-mythic significance in New York City. Its striking form has captured the imagination of some of the nation’s most prominent artists. Its enduring iconographic power makes it one of the most photographed locations in New York. In popular culture, the bridge is a symbol for the city itself, used in countless establishing shots in films and television.
But that iconic status comes at a cost. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, at peak hours the promenade was crammed, uncomfortable, and sometimes unsafe. Thousands of pedestrians and cyclists crossed the bridge every day. In response to these conditions, the New York City Council and Van Alen Institute launched Reimagining Brooklyn Bridge, an international design competition that aims to spark a new public conversation about New York City’s infrastructure. Springtime entered the competition with their entry called New City Tissue.
Update August 2020: The winning design in the Professional category is Brooklyn Bridge Forest by Pilot Projects Design Collective, Cities4Forests, Wildlife Conservation Society, Grimshaw, and Silman; New York and Montreal. We congratulate the team with their winning entry.
Overview of the elevated walk path hovering over the commuter track
The meandering walk path with the best views
Overview
New City Tissue is implanted onto the Brooklyn Bridge. Airy strips of self-sufficient mobility tissue that will grow and expand over time, introducing new opportunities, connections and experiences. New City Tissue kicks off by solving some practical pain points (separating the various passenger flows, creating clear and easy access), and over time adds more weight to sustainable and shared mobility into the boroughs. The commuter track brings efficiency and safety, the walkway peace and delight.
History
The Brooklyn Bridge is both a historical landmark and at the same time one of the city’s most vital traffic arteries. New City Tissue interacts with the Brooklyn Bridge, and doesn’t overpower it. By adding a layer over the bridge, the original character of the icon isn’t affected. It engages a dialogue between past, present and future mobility in the city, maintaining and refueling its landmark status.
Access, safety
Urban mobility is evolving into a more sustainable one, with more focus on shared personal mobility. Within the concept, the bridge entry hubs will play an important role. Apart from clearly separating and guiding the various mobility flows, the bridge entry mobility hubs facilitate shared mobility across the bridge and into the destination boroughs. The connecting commuter track and walk-paths divide ‘Must’ and ‘Lust’, providing room for those very different mindsets. The commuter track brings efficiency and safety for those wanting to go from A to B; the walkway brings peace and delight in a meandering stroll along the bridge with the best views.
Environmental Benefit and Security
New City Tissue makes way for sustainable mobility. In a growing concept, we start prioritizing sustainable and shared mobility. We kick-off with a multimodal commuter track and an elevated walkway. The walk-way will expand over time, slowly taking over the bridge and traditional traffic like live tissue. User’s security and social safety is guaranteed by separating pedestrians from wheeled commuters into separate tracks. Both paths are spacious and well-illuminated, powered by the photovoltaic panels along the sides of the walkway. Both commuter track and walkway entries are obstructed with plant pots to avoid larger vehicles from entering the paths.
Feasibility
The walkway will be a lightweight aluminum structure that is suspended by beams from the central part of the bridge structure, in order to avoid high off-center loads. The path will be split up in longitudinal segments to allow for some flexibility of the arc curvature under load variations. Where the 2 paths split up, a cable mesh is applied to interconnect them. At the towers finally, the walkway is held in place in transversal direction.
Section view of the bridge
New City Tissue is (1) a growing concept, that (2) divides Must and Lust passenger flows and includes (3) mobility hubs to close the gaps in people’s multimodal journey into the boroughs.
Walking up to Manhattan never felt this great (and safe!)
