NYU LMC ALUMNI COURTYARD
New York, NY
2022 ASLA-NY Merit Award
The Alumni Courtyard is the center of the academic wing of the NYU Langone Medical Center campus. JPLA designed this courtyard as a plaza that is open and flexible, accommodating events, lectures, work sessions, casual dining and everyday campus life. The courtyard will serve the student cafe in Smilow, the newly renovated library in Medical Science Building West and the new Science Building which is home to a extensive cafeterias, convention areas and research laboratories.
The courtyard sits on top of the campus vivarium. There is very limited depth for soil below the paving. The design uses the grade change between the raised elevation of the new Science Building to create a central plinth with monumental sit steps on two sides. This allows depth for the central trees planted in a continuous plane of groundcover. Raised planting beds clad in blackened steel surround the edges of the courtyard, framing the central plaza. These areas are planted with a variety of forest floor understory plants and shaped with intimate niches with seating amidst the lush plantings.
The Courtyard, as well as much of the NYU Langone Campus, was flooded during Hurricane Sandy in 2012. The design of the Alumni Courtyard incorporates rising flood gates and raised curbs at buildings to protect interior spaces. The courtyard plantings were selected for their resilience to tidal flooding, urban pollutants and tolerance to deep shade.
CLIENT: NYU Langone Medical Center Real Estate Development
COLLABORATORS: Ennead Architects
New York, NY
LEED Platinum Rated
The Science Building is a LEED Platinum research facility located on the NYU Langone Medical Center Campus in Manhattan. The project utilizes the 14,000 SF roof space to restore native habitat and connect fragmented ecosystem corridors along the waterfront. The native green roof supports a diversity of native micro-climates while relying entirely on a built-in reservoir of rainwater for irrigation. Accessible terrace spaces are built into the green roof to provide students and research faculty a place to study or find peace in a high-pressure environment. Terraces are designed as flexible spaces that both furnish the everyday needs of users and afford opportunities for large gatherings during presentations and celebrations.
The landscape for both the Science Building and Alumni Courtyard were designed to be resilient to future flooding. At-grade planting and surface materials were designed to withstand occasional inundation of saltwater. Deployable flood gates and planted berms protect buildings from up to 10 ft. of flood waters.
CLIENT: NYU Langone Medical Center Real Estate Development
COLLABORATORS: Ennead Architects
New York, NY
Winner of the 2012 ASLA New York Chapter Merit Award
NYU Langone Medical Center is the home to the 5,500sf Fleck Courtyard that serves doctors, staff, patients and visitors of the hospital and its new cafe. JPLA transformed an underused, inhospitable courtyard into an active and beloved gathering space. It is a calm respit featuring a raised central lawn with a mounded birch grove and woodland plantings. There are variety of vantage points from which one can sit and enjoy the courtyard – cafe tables, stone benches, and the monumental pre-cast concrete steps surrounding the central lawn. The courtyard straddles two structures, a parking garage and a research laboratory, so much of the project was designed and detailed as a green roof.
We continue to be involved with the oversight of the maintenance of this courtyard.
CLIENT: NYU Langone Medical Center Real Estate Development
COLLABORATORS: Michielli + Wyetzner Architects
HUDSON RIVER PARK
PARKWIDE LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE
TERM CONTRACT
New York, NY
JPLA is in its third year of a three year Repair Design Contract with Hudson River Park Trust for the restoration of several areas within this 550 acre waterfront park. As Prime Consultants, JPLA interfaces directly with the Hudson River Park Trust to manage repair design projects. The work involves analysis of existing areas in need of repair, creation of field reports to document the issues and proposing solutions and long-term maintenance recommendations, conducting design studies for proposed re-design of existing park areas, preparation of full construction documents for restoration of these spaces and the management of sub-consultants such as civil engineers, cost estimators, and environmental consultants.
Completed projects include renovation of playgrounds at Pier 25 and Pier 51, reconstruction of Pier 84 paving and the restoration of two bosques including soil remediation to restore the health of the mature trees and re-design the paving at Pier 45.
CLIENT: Hudson River Park Trust
PROJECT Dates: Ongoing: 2017-2020
SCHIFF HOUSE DAYCARE CENTER
New York, NY
The restoration of an historic building on campus includes a playground, butterfly garden, and vegetable garden. JPLA’s design creates a dynamic landscape that fosters social interaction, self-directed play, physical activities, and exploration of nature.
At the entrance to the building, an accessible ramp is surrounded by a butterfly garden with colorful wildflowers, meadow grasses and native shrubs that provide food and habitat for butterflies, birds and other pollinators. On the east side of the building, a vegetable garden allows children to get their hands dirty, and to learn about cultivating plants and growing food. The garden is surrounded by a border of herbs, medicinal, and textural plants that stimulate the senses.
At the rear of the building, a playground is formed by an undulating concrete wall that winds through the space, and encourages sitting, balancing or climbing. A concrete track gives children the opportunity for large muscle play and for riding on toys with wheels. In the center of the space, a wooden deck platform creates a flexible space for rest, for assembly, and for dramatic play. Atop the deck platform is a custom wooden nest, made of bent, laminated wood ribs with natural mesh walls. This nest creates a sheltered place to sit, rest, and play within.
Play spaces are also integrated into planted areas at the perimeter of the playground. A natural tree trunk on its side creates an imaginative world for climbing. Within the existing hillside, a stepstone pathway leads to both a water table with a pump and embankment slide.
CLIENT: CUNY, CCNY & DASNY
COLLABORATORS: Michielli + Wyetzner Architects
The goal of the playground renovation at this NYC Public Elementary School was to replace the existing playground’s outdated and uninspired equipment and deteriorating safety surfacing with a dynamic and durable playground design that can be enjoyed for many years to come. Expanding the existing tree pits into continuous planting areas serves to protect and revitalize the health of the mature Honey Locusts and to frame the playground with a lush border of shrubs and groundcovers. The design of custom wood play structures atop a rhythmic patterning of safety tiles in natural palette offers a balance of active and imaginative play and rest. A signature castle tower play structure draws inspiration from the neighboring historic Armory with two turrets connected by a climbing bridge and a spiral slide. Beyond school hours, this enriching play space will be open to the children and caregivers of the larger community.
Currently in Design Development
JPLA designed the renovation of Hudson River Park’s Pier 84 Dog Run. Working closely with the Hudson River Park Trust to determine the scope of the renovation, JPLA developed a playful design that enlivens and enriches the Dog Run, while preserving, refining, and repairing key elements in the existing space. The design includes a color coat pattern over resurfaced asphalt pavement, a water play area with multi-nozzle spray features, and a selection of repurposed bulkhead boulders for dog play and sculpture. The renovation also includes new benches, a drinking fountain with a pet bowl, and a retractable hose for ease of maintenance.
CLIENT: Hudson River Park Trust
Brooklyn, NY
Coney Island Head Start School is a new 35,000 sf building serving low-income pre-school children. The construction was funded by FEMA to replace the previous building that was damaged in Super Storm Sandy. The new design meets all the Head Start Design Directives and integrates green space at each level of the building. The landscape meets the street with an entry ramp through a native dune landscape. The second and third floor rooftop play spaces span the footprint of the classrooms below, and are directly adjacent and accessible to the classrooms they serve. Together, they make up a 5,000 sf multi-level play area incorporating safety surface mounds, vegetable garden plots, natural logs for climbing, and a 12-foot long slide connecting the two levels. JPLA worked in partnership with the Green Belt Native Plant Center to select a palette of plantings indigenous to the area. Our landscape celebrates the coastal dunes in the area, and in doing so, provides an opportunity to teach kids about nature, local ecology and the important role of a resilient landscape.
Rendering by: Dattner Architects
CLIENT: Catholic Charities, POP Development
COLLABORATORS: Dattner Architects
New York, NY
JPLA completed the planting design for this 23,000 sf courtyard landscape at NYU Langone Medical Center as a link to several other landscapes within the medical campus that JPLA designed. The Tisch Courtyard landscape includes on-grade planting, intensive green roof planting, and over-sized planters designed after those at the neighboring Fleck Courtyard. The planting typologies include lawns, sun and shade-tolerant meadows, as well as forest floor understory plantings. Many of these plantings are also used in the planted areas of the new Science Building and Alumni Courtyard landscapes which will be constructed in Spring and Fall 2017.
CLIENT: NYU Langone Medical Center Real Estate Development
COLLABORATORS: Quennell Rotschild & Partners, Ennead Architects
This Hospital campus expansion included a comprehensive landscape design for the renovation of the existing Hospital’s labor and delivery center. The landscape surrounding the hospital incorporates a new entry drive and turnaround, entrance plazas at two levels, as well a hospital courtyard and roof garden. The larger landscape incorporates walking paths with seating areas for expectant mothers, visitors, and staff as well as an extensive planting buffer for screening, privacy and stormwater retention. The design shapes the dramatic topography of the existing building’s thirteen-foot elevation change into a rounded hillside with stone retaining walls and a terraced landscape with amphitheater seating. The entry landscape procession creates a new brand to the campus and a welcome approach to the hospital.