YOSSARIAN 40N 73W

Harvard University // Recreational Facility // Queens, NY // 2010

The island typology is one that is not unfamiliar to the lifeblood of New York City. Many of the small islands that pepper the city’s shoreline have been utilized in the past for various utilities that required separation from the masses - quarantines, mental hospitals, prisons, iconic symbols of the city itself - and were artificially augmented in many cases to better perform these duties.

Willet’s Point provides an opportunity for the city to engage with a new island, one created for recreation and remediation. Positioning itself over existing highway infrastructure, the recreational facility and resulting island are intimately connected to the circulation of the region while remaining unplugged from the cacophony of the contemporary city, allowing for reflection on the urban condition and one’s place within it. Formerly a salt marsh, the site is re-mediated to return as such, stationing the facility within an augmented nature that prophesies the renegotiation of boundaries occurring with the onset of sea level rise and climate change.