On the corner of Hudson and King Streets in Hudson Square, a new 80-foot-long electric-orange-and-red structure is straddling the sidewalk and the road. When I visited last Thursday afternoon, I saw a woman eating lunch at one of the built-in tables and a couple having coffee on a bench behind one of the street trees incorporated into the design. I immediately beelined to a hammock at the far end and plopped down into it. A nearby Con Ed worker walked up to me and said he’d wanted to sit in the hammock all day but had been too nervous to. After sitting down next to me, he said if I had arrived a couple of hours earlier, I’d have seen kids swinging on the bars and scrambling up and down the benches, which are covered in soft rubber and scratchy Astroturf and double as a playscape. Once we got up, the couple asked how the hammock was (answer: surprisingly relaxing for something on the street!) before stepping in themselves. It’s an experience I didn’t expect to have in Hudson Square, an area I tend to think of as a gridlocked on-ramp to the Holland Tunnel trying to remake itself into a new corporate hub.
The idea behind the colorful structure, aptly named Restorative Ground, was “to create a varied ‘landscape of choice,’” says Bryony Roberts, a member of WIP Collaborative, the group that designed the project. “Hopefully, there’s something for everyone at different moments of the day or week or year.” It’s the winning entry in Care for Hudson Square, a competition organized by the Urban Design Forum, Hudson Square BID, and Hudson Square Properties that invited architects to make the neighborhood’s streets more vibrant, restorative, and relaxing for families, workers, and visitors during the city’s reopening. Restorative Ground also shows how Street Seats, a program the city currently has in its placemaking arsenal, could be improved by designing spaces for neurodiversity. A far cry from the private streeteries that have popped up everywhere in the past year, it illustrates a type of inclusive, publicly accessible architecture the city ought to be building more of. As Roberts says, “How can streets support social uses and not only infrastructural ones?”
A few years ago, a typical public-seating installation — tables, chairs, and umbrellas on a platform surrounded by planters — was on the same corner of King at Hudson. It emerged from the DOT’s Street Seats program, which helps ground-floor businesses install seating on streets and sidewalks. WIP Collaborative, a new practice composed of seven independent designers with backgrounds in architecture, landscape architecture, and fashion, has been researching how to create more inclusive public spaces and thinks that updating programs that have established design standards, like Street Seats, could scale their ideas. “In an overstandardized public realm, you have this generic public space applied everywhere,” explains Lindsay Harkema, WIP Collaborative’s founder. That certainly doesn’t work for everyone. The group, which also includes Abby Coover, Elsa Ponce, Ryan Brooke Thomas, Sera Ghadaki, and Sonya Gimon, was interested in finding ways to impart more variety to public space could make the city more enjoyable to more people. “What we found in our research in talking to [autism] advocates and self-advocates is you’re either in a public space that’s very active, loud, and overwhelming — like a playground or Times Square — or an empty plaza, which is understimulating,” she says.
Restorative Ground takes a more expansive view of what a Street Seat can be: It’s a playground, a calm refuge, a place to meet a friend, and a landscape to explore. As Harkema says, “The public is diverse, and the public realm should be providing those experiences to them.”
Restorative Ground is a 24-foot–by–80-foot public installation that its designers, WIP Collaborative, call a “landscape of choice.” The 2,100-square-foot space has some areas meant for more active use and others intended to be a bit calmer; it was informed by the firm’s research into neurodiversity and how the built environment can better meet the public’s needs by accommodating a wider range of uses.
To make Restorative Ground inviting to a wide range of New Yorkers, WIP Collaborative conducted research and interviews with disability activists, autism advocates, women, teens, and children to create an inclusive design that takes sensory needs, physical ability, and age into account. WIP also engaged with the Hudson Square community — including residents and the Children’s Museum of the Arts around the corner — to hear what they wanted.
The structure has a mix of materials, textures, and heights that enables people to use the space as they please. It’s also divided into zones for uses that are focused, energetic, or calming. “We’re interested in this question of sensory sensitivity, which is not addressed well in public-space design,” Roberts says, referring to sound, touch, and activity.
WIP Collaborative conceived of the easternmost part of the structure (near the intersection of King and Hudson Streets) as a zone for “focused” activities like eating a meal, having a conversation, or hosting a meeting. To support those uses, there are two large tables with built-in stools. The structure is level with the sidewalk, and there is space for a person who uses a wheelchair to comfortably sit at the tables.
The center of the structure is nicknamed Playscape Peak. It has a mix of high and low benches that double as hills for kids to scramble up and down as well as bars to hang from.
The westernmost section is more of a low-stimulation zone for calmer activities like reading or lounging. This is where WIP incorporated the hammock, which is woven from smooth rope.
Since this section of the block included two street trees, WIP worked with the Parks Department to make sure the structure allowed enough air and water flow to the tree pits. Metal mesh, which hugs the trunks, did the trick. The initial budget for construction was $100,000, which was funded by Hines, the real-estate development company that owns the buildings on the same block as the structure.
WIP hopes the concepts explored in the structure — like spaces for focus, activity, and calm — could scale throughout the city by incorporating these attributes into design standards for public spaces. “We’re interested in how this becomes co-created with a particular neighborhood or community,” Harkema says. “If we had the opportunity to do it elsewhere, it wouldn’t be the same size or configuration, but there would be similar ideas to test out.”
Restorative Ground is a 24-foot–by–80-foot public installation that its designers, WIP Collaborative, call a “landscape of choice.” The 2,100-square-foot space has some areas meant for more active use and others intended to be a bit calmer; it was informed by the firm’s research into neurodiversity and how the built environment can better meet the public’s needs by accommodating a wider range of uses.
To make Restorative Ground inviting to a wide range of New Yorkers, WIP Collaborative conducted research and interviews with disability activists, autism advocates, women, teens, and children to create an inclusive design that takes sensory needs, physical ability, and age into account. WIP also engaged with the Hudson Square community — including residents and the Children’s Museum of the Arts around the corner — to hear what they wanted.
The structure has a mix of materials, textures, and heights that enables people to use the space as they please. It’s also divided into zones for uses that are focused, energetic, or calming. “We’re interested in this question of sensory sensitivity, which is not addressed well in public-space design,” Roberts says, referring to sound, touch, and activity.
WIP Collaborative conceived of the easternmost part of the structure (near the intersection of King and Hudson Streets) as a zone for “focused” activities like eating a meal, having a conversation, or hosting a meeting. To support those uses, there are two large tables with built-in stools. The structure is level with the sidewalk, and there is space for a person who uses a wheelchair to comfortably sit at the tables.
The center of the structure is nicknamed Playscape Peak. It has a mix of high and low benches that double as hills for kids to scramble up and down as well as bars to hang from.
The westernmost section is more of a low-stimulation zone for calmer activities like reading or lounging. This is where WIP incorporated the hammock, which is woven from smooth rope.
Since this section of the block included two street trees, WIP worked with the Parks Department to make sure the structure allowed enough air and water flow to the tree pits. Metal mesh, which hugs the trunks, did the trick. The initial budget for construction was $100,000, which was funded by Hines, the real-estate development company that owns the buildings on the same block as the structure.
WIP hopes the concepts explored in the structure — like spaces for focus, activity, and calm — could scale throughout the city by incorporating these attributes into design standards for public spaces. “We’re interested in how this becomes co-created with a particular neighborhood or community,” Harkema says. “If we had the opportunity to do it elsewhere, it wouldn’t be the same size or configuration, but there would be similar ideas to test out.”
