Creative Yet Extreme Ideas for Park Avenue’s Central Median

The Park Avenue’s central median in New York City is yet unused, however, it has become the subject of a series of speculative and spectacular redesigns. Under Beyond the Centerline project, architects, designers, and planners bring out numerous ideas to breathe a new life into the site, to some extent they are quite extreme too. The competition which is organized by an NYC real estate company allows the participants to re-imagine what they can do to this precious urban site, inciting admiring looks from a new generation of New Yorkers.

While it has not been confirmed whether the winning design will be realized, the organizer used the competition as a starting point for people to think how to develop underutilized sites in cities. That being said, let’s take a peek at the said ideas from the participants:

Extreme Ideas #1

Many architects come up with extreme ideas. One architect chooses to design rock-climbing walls and waterfalls for the center median.

Another one suggested the idea of kayak commuter lanes or commuting by boat.

Among those extreme ideas, short-listed participants brought out the images of ice-skating rinks, yoga studies, elevated basketball courts, and Modernist art exhibition spaces.

Extreme Ideas #2

Some participants prefer to naturalize the dense city and create space for natural environments and landscapes. This natural approach is believed to break the community from the busy car-filled route in the Manhattan. Even there is one idea that proposes to create forest habitats for urban wildlife.

Regardless, the ideas lean more on nature and maximizing the available small footprint through building above-ground and underground amenities, such as markets, cafes, shops, and theaters.

Via Web Urbanist