A temporary landmark for Central Park?
The Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir in Central Park is a 106 acre reservoir which holds one billion gallons of heavily contaminated water. The reservoir encompasses an eighth of the whole area of what is probably the most famous park in the world, but it is currently pretty much unusable. It sits mostly stagnant and is fenced off as a health risk to millions of people and animals.
This is a bit of a tragedy given that the park is such a beautiful spot. New Yorkers hold it dear and it is a real shame that they can’t use it to its full potential – and New York architecture studio DFA agrees.
DFA is a studio which prides itself on delivering innovative designs which are also environmentally friendly, and they have certainly fulfilled that brief with their approach to this contaminated Central Park reservoir.
The only real solution to contaminated water is to filter it over and over again using a complicated and large filtration system which is noisy and looks pretty horrible. DFA have come up with a way to make this whole process a lot prettier and which will make the reservoir usable for locals once more by proposing Central Park Tower.
The idea is to build a 712 foot tall prefabricated timber tower which has a filtration system at its base and a viewing platform at the top so locals can get great views over the park and the city. The tower will be topped by a wind turbine which will power the filtration system, making it a sustainable solution.
In addition, the fact that it is made out of timber ensures that it will be an extremely sustainable project. Timber is the best material we have for sustainable construction, and the new glue-lamination techniques also happen to make it exceptionally strong. The pair of latticed helix structures which will make up the body of the tower combined with the tensile steel cables anchoring it in place ensure that this tower will be far sturdier than it looks. The outer skin of the building will be a transparent fabric-like material which will allow clear views to the people climbing up to the viewing platforms. Any risk of lightning strikes is allayed by a 112 foot tall spire that doubles as a lightning rod.
Central Park Tower will be the tallest timber structure in the world if built and will hopefully draw attention to the versatility of this material. Many architects are already experimenting with latticed timber construction and it is clearly a building material which will become more and more a feature of our lives as time goes on. The environmental impact of building everything out of concrete is already under scrutiny – concrete production is the cause of 8% of global emissions annually – and it will need to be mitigated harshly in the future. Timber offers a potential answer, and projects like Central Park Tower can help take us there.
