A northern Maltzan-designed water-taxi dock and amphitheater. Rendering: Hargreaves Associates/Michael Maltzan Architecture

THE NECKLACE
Hargreaves Associates and Michael Maltzan Architecture take a necklace as its dominant metaphor. “We thought of the promenade as a necklace with several strands,” says George Hargreaves, “and then these jewels on it that are plazas or activities.” The jewels are buildings, which echo the fluid lines of the public spaces and places, with few right angles. There is a double-ring hotel and conference center, an ecology center set over new wetlands to the west, and another doughnut creating a pool in the southeast. Flowerlike canopies shade multiple ferry terminals, and there is a rippling cover (Maltzan is a former Gehry employee) over the amphitheater—an open, grassy space that flows into a lawn and playing fields. The promenade loops like a racetrack in and out from the land to various piers. Many walkways would be fitted with solar canopies that would, with the power generated by windmills set in a new range of pine barrens, take the southern end off the grid.

Hargreaves picked Maltzan to design the architecture because of its winning plan for the Los Angeles State Historic Park, and because of Maltzan’s experience designing MoMA QNS. “I realized he has faced this problem before, of creating something ‘out there’ and getting people to go out there,” Hargreaves says.

HARGREAVES This team describes its promenade as a necklace arching in and out into the water studded with pearls like a set of southerly dunes. Rendering: Hargreaves Associates/Michael Maltzan Architecture

Related:

• Archive: “Features”
• Articles by Alexandra Lange
• Table of Contents: Jun 4, 2007 issue of New York | Subscribe!