Sponge Park
"Staged: Show Trials, Political Theater, and the Aesthetics of Judgment" introduces DLANDstudio’s pioneering and award-winning Sponge Park concept for the regeneration of Brooklyn's notorious Gowanus Canal.
Before there were sponge cities, there were sponge parks. Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal is the site of the Sponge Park master plan and pilot projects, instigating a widespread movement toward greater urban permeability. Designed by Susannah Drake and her former Brooklyn-based firm DLANDstudio Architecture + Landscape Architecture, their project was completed in 2016 and recognized with National AIA and ASLA Urban Design Awards and the inaugural Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian National Design Award for Climate Action in 2020.
The Gowanus Canal, a former freshwater creek and tidal marsh, suffered heavy pollution from industrial use. Sponge Park, a series of public urban waterfront spaces, was conceived to slow, absorb, and filter dirty surface water runoff, clean contaminated canal water, reduce combined sewer overflow, and add open space in a park-starved neighborhood.
This book introduces the Sponge Park in great detail with photos, illustrations, plans, and diagrams. It demonstrates the concept’s potential as a component of a larger vision for a new paradigm of coastal urbanism, upland adaptation, and right-of-way design in the twenty-first century. Sponge parks proactively address how to manage stormwater runoff from increasingly severe storm events and reduce detrimental impacts. It is a must-read for design students, architects, and academics as well as for elected officials, policymakers, and community activists.