Our Last Few Days in Brooklyn

Two action-packed weeks have come to a close. The last 72 hours included a visit to the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment facility, Kingsland Wildflowers, a walking tour of the financial district, the Billion Oyster Project, and lots of time dedicated towards our design challenge. The program concluded with some classic NYC experiences – Broadway (Phantom of the Opera), a Yankees game, and an improv comedy show!

Here are some pictures and a bit of context…

Kingsland Wildflowers is an incredible project in the stewardship of the Newtown Creek Alliance. It has multiple green roofs built on top of film and tv production studio. Some of the green roofs are “extensive” (only a few inches of growing media planted with sedums) while others are “intensive” designs with native wildflowers planted in the deeper growing media.

The Billion Oyster Project is an impressive initiative to remediate decades of damage to NY’s Harbor through oyster filtration. Our group was helping to create new oyster beds with shells collected from the city’s restaurants.

Newtown Creek has an education center where students learn about NYC’s water supply and treatment, including some pretty cool technology to convert human waste into biogas.

Lastly, students presented their design proposals on Friday. The objective was to redesign Pratt’s Higgins Hall to capture stormwater runoff based on parameters provided by NYC’s Department of Environmental Protection Green Infrastructure Grant Program. Teams demonstrated an excellent understanding of the technical considerations for designing a green roof and/or bioswale while also bringing in creative ideas to improve the usability and aesthetics of the space for other stakeholders.

And some final random pictures out and about in NYC…