On May 12th, 2011, the official opening of the Peter Minuit Plaza and the dedication of the New Amsterdam Plein & Pavilion took place in Battery Park, New York. The New Amsterdam Plein and Pavilion is a gift from the Netherlands to New York in honour of 400 years of friendship. The project was conceived by the Battery Conservancy to create an extraordinary ‘outdoor living room’ for spontaneous and scheduled activities, public markets, seating and shade, and a gleaming white, state-of-the-art pavilion for visitor information and delicious locally grown gourmet food. The geometry of the pavilion expresses its programmatic intentions, with the centre of the installation designed for more permanent functions. The formal figure of the structure becomes increasingly more fluid and dispersed away from this centre as it opens up onto the immediate landscape. The attendant ‘flowering’ of the four wings of the pavilion responds to varying orientations on the site.
Comments