10th October 2001
Opening of Carousel House
Opening of Carousel House Marks Completion of Phase 1 of
New Waterfront Park for Greenport, Long Island
Phase 1 of Mitchell Park, a four acre waterfront park under construction in the heart of Greenport Village on the North Fork of Long Island, New York, is now complete and has been officially opened by Governor George E Pataki and Mayor David E Kapell of the Village of Greenport. Significant funding for Mitchell Park was a direct result of Governor Pataki’s Waterfront Revitalization Program which seeks to improve access to waterfronts across the state of New York. Mitchell Park serves to link key elements within the Village, including the ferry, Commercial Wharf, the main street and the marina. The winning scheme to revitalize this former brown field site was devised by New York based architects SHoP/Sharples Holden and Pasquarelli working with the New York office of consulting engineers Buro Happold.
SHoP’s design approach has been twofold. First is the creation of a landscape which is visually pleasing, in keeping with the community and suitable for the activities intended to take place there. Secondly it seeks to link key points within the village itself – the ferry terminal and rail station, Front Street and the site of a future marina. This has been achieved by ‘bridging’ the site with a timber boardwalk and using the same timber for the shading arbors and the carousel house, so that they meld into one coherent piece.
SHoP has worked closely with Buro Happold on the design of the park to provide a design that was both in keeping with the locality whilst providing a contemporary and well detailed solution. Phase 1 of the scheme includes construction of the main section of the Greenport Harbourwalk and links to the existing piers, a waterside amphitheatre and a glass and timber carousel house housing the historic Northrop-Grumman carousel. The total estimated cost of construction for phase 1 is $3.5million
(£2.4million), with funding provided through five different agencies of the State of New York.
The main feature of the park is the carousel house designed to house Greenport’s famous vintage carousel. This structure is twelve sided and is designed to be used throughout the year. On each face there is a set of bi-folding doors that can open and close independently of each other and be set at any position. This enables the building to respond to the weather conditions in an infinite number of ways; from being totally open on all sides in the summer, to having only one side partially open to offer protection from the winds off the water in winter.
In order to provide a building with very minimal structural framing, the use of flitched timber beams were used. This involved sandwiching 1.9cm thick high strength steel plates between two pieces of timber to provide a beam with the strength and stiffness of steel, but using the timber for fire and corrosion protection and lateral stability. This method of construction is commonly found in old industrial warehouses, but it has been brought up to date with the use of Ipe hardwoods and flush mounted stainless steel hardware. The beams span about 8m from the exterior columns to a central compression ring to support the stressed skin plywood roof panels.
The columns, constructed from double 10cm x 30.5cm Ipe members, are spaced apart to provide slits of light between these deep members. The resulting increase in stiffness allowed the columns to be used as cantilevers that eliminated the need for any cross bracing, which would have obstructed the doors. Shear key connectors were used at a number of locations to transfer the forces between the steel and timber members at the critical joints, these incorporated specially machined stainless steel ‘sex bolts’ that were up to 30cm long to pass through all members.
The doors are supported using an independent system of structural steel members that are propped off the main timber frame. These members house the worm drive system that activates the doors that measure about 5m x 5m per pair. The use of the worm drive enables the doors to be opened in winds of up to 40 mph. Each door operates independently, and can be opened or closed in under 60 seconds. The pattern of the doors was derived through study of wave patterns common to both the movements of the carousel ride and its location on Peconic Bay.
SHoP is now working on Phase 2 of the development which will incorporate additional boardwalk to extend the park further east to provide a Harbormaster's office and ferry terminal in keeping with the style and language of the just completed structures.
CREDITS:
Client: Village of Greenport, New York
Architects: SHoP/Sharples Holden Pasquerelli
Structural Engineer: Buro Happold
Mechanical Engineer: Laszlo Bodak Engineer, PC
Electrical Engineers: Leonard J Strandberg & Associates/ Laszlo Bodak Engineer PC
Civil Engineer: Leonard J Strandberg & Associates
Landscape Consultant: Quennell Rothschild & Partners, LLP
Lighting Consultant: Universe Lighting
General Contractor: Carriage Hill Associates,Inc
Electrical Contractor: Johnson Electric Construction Corporation
Door Fabricator: L. D. Flecken, Inc.
Carpenter: J.E. O’Donnell Construction Co, Inc.
Background Information for Editors:
ShoP/Sharples Holden Pasquarelli is an emerging design firm with five partners whose education and experience encompass architecture, fine arts, structural engineering, and finance and business management. Founded in 1996, SHoP was recently awarded the 2001 Academy Award in Architecture by the Architectural League of New York and the 2001 Academy Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Their broad range of recent projects includes a university academic building, a civic park, two public art installations, a museum, retail shops and two mid-rise apartment buildings. With each new design problem the office uses a combination of digital expertise, in the form of three-dimensional computer form generation and rapid prototyping, and model building in their in-house shop, to arrive at an original and buildable solution that only that particular project could have inspired. SHoP’s reputation as architects who can link emerging concepts and theories of the digital age with the tactile fundamentals of design and construction is what sets us apart from other design practices. We have a proven track record of bringing cutting edge design to a project while using the computer to maintain, or often reduce, construction budgets. Concepts of value engineering are inherent in the logic based design strategies we employ and the result is a dynamic, exciting building with a budget comparable to that of standard predictable construction.
Buro Happold is a multi-disciplinary international practice of consulting engineers established in 1976 offering civil and structural engineering, mechanical and electrical engineering, quantity surveying, building services and environmental engineering, infrastructure and traffic engineering, geotechnical engineering, façade engineering, fire engineering, Computational Fluid Dynamics analysis, access consultancy, project management, urban design and a range of specialist CAD services. Over 500 staff are located in 12 international offices.
Buro Happold has been working across the US for the past 20 years. In 1998 increasing demand to provide solutions for a wider range of business types and design challenges resulted in the opening of Buro Happold’s first US office in New York. The US office provides core services of structural engineering, mechanical, electrical and plumbing engineering and long span and lightweight structures together with specialist consultancy in sustainable design, fire engineering, access (ADA) consultancy, façade consultancy and information technology and communications.
