WXY architecture + urban design

WXY worked closely with landscape architects Starr Whitehouse and Dutch garden designer Piet Oudolf to transform this historic park for the Battery Conservancy. Once a two-acre area of asphalt, the Bosque now fulfills historic Battery Park’s potential as a destination: full of natural abundance, with spaces to sit, eat, and play, it is a lushly planted porch to New York’s Inner Harbor.

The new design’s elements articulate a new curvilinear park geometry. The Kiosks are derived from a series of arcs and made of certified sustainably-harvested hardwood. The curving Benches were designed to hold up to the wear and tear of relaxing New Yorkers with a minimal use of material. Both Kiosks and Benches employ computer controlled manufacturing technology giving the architects direct control over the fabrication of subtly differentiated multiples. A walk-through water feature based on the spiral of Archimedes anchors the northern end of the Bosque.

The client‘s focus on design innovation has resulted in a park that is rich and colorful in its planting and playful in its architecture, a series of public spaces and features that respond to the site’s extraordinary inheritance with a contemporary sensibility.