Baisley Pond Park
![Picture](/uploads/1/1/1/8/111859715/editor/research-baisley-3-22.jpg?1640924919)
The Baisley Pond Park is a public park located in Jamaica, Queens in New York City. It is one of New York City's biggest parks (over 2 million square feet). There are multiple playground areas, walking paths, sports spaces and gardens throughout. As shown in the plan, at the middle of the park is a large reservoir built in the 18th century. When digging the reservoir, workers found mastodon bones, which led to the placement of the mastodon statue in one of the playground areas. The park also extends across streets through the neighborhood.
I found two distinct themes in this garden exploration: the pond as a central organizing element and recreational spaces away from the central pond to create distinct experiences. The parti diagram highlights the pond as a central element by creating an inverse figure ground. The idea of nature creating order is enforced, and there is clearly more open space within the park than in the urban surroundings. The figure ground highlights how trees surround the site to create a buffer/separation between the natural world and the built urban world. The noise diagram shows the nodes of activity along the edges (recreational and from the urban landscape outside) in contrast to the quieter enter by the pond, thus creating two different experiences within one space. In edges and ordering, the soft edges created by the trees serve as a buffer alongside paved hard edges, and the lakes and trees serve as organizers as well.
The collage conveys a park landscape that is flocked on both sides by urban environment (both commercial and residential, like the neighborhood in Jamaica). The trees create separation between the environments. The large pond is located in the middle as well, with the views of skyscrapers creating the reminder of the larger urban context. I used the brick to continue the store fronts on the left side to emphasize the "wall" that they create for the park itself. The park serves as a natural oasis in an otherwise busy and bustling city environment, highlighting the importance of green space in urban settings.
|
Bamboo Gardens
![Picture](/uploads/1/1/1/8/111859715/editor/reserch-bamboo-3-22.jpg?1640925789)
The Bamboo Gardens, designed by Alex Chemetoff, are located in a larger park space in Paris, France. The garden lies below the grade of the general park, and is only accessible through one path in and out. There are steel walkways that pass over the gardens to allow people to get to the other side, and similar steel pathways occur within the gardens themselves. In the garden, much of the infrastructure is exposed in contrast with the lush green vegetation. There is one circular built structure near the entrance/exit to the park, where the sounds of water trickling can be heard.
I found a few themes in my exploration of this garden: vegetation framing paths and a focus on circulation in relation to spatial experience. The parti shows the 2 distinct layers of this park (ground level and park level which is under), and how the expansion and compression of the paths creates interesting experiences. The figure ground highlights the density of the vegetation, so concentrated that it feels like a never-ending forest when one is in the garden. Due to its location in an urban environment, noise presents a conflict; however, the use of dense vegetation dissipates much of that noise inside the actual garden space to encourage solitude and reflection. The manmade vs. natural shows how the open spaces are man-made- almost like interventions in a forest- while the natural spaces frame the more contained circulation corridors.
![Picture](/uploads/1/1/1/8/111859715/editor/final-bamboo-collage.jpg?1640926029)
The collage stems from the concept of carving out of the urban landscape to create a dense and curious forest below. The concept of expansion and compression is shown in the narrow path that leads to the open cylinder in the middle of the collage, similar to the Bamboo Gardens. The walkway connects the two urban landscapes that surround the park (similar to the Baisley Pond Park). The two landscapes used on the sides are actually the spaces located on the sides of the park. The dense vegetation seems to grow out and up from the garden, creating a dense forest full of wonder. The Eiffel Tower stands tall in the back as a reminder of the urban landscape and a nod to the garden's location, Paris.
Overall Thoughts
This project was an intriguing exploration of both of these gardens. I liked looking at two of them so I could compare and contrast the different approaches. It was interesting to see how they vary in design and purpose as public gardens, simply based on their context!