GREENPORT TIDAL PARK

Location: Long Island, NY
Date: 2002
Program: Waterfront Park

A park to bring the users into a deeper appreciation of the natural forces that underlie their village. The park is a viewing and entering point for the tides, for their coming in and their going out, for their rising into waters and their ebbing revelation of the sands and aquatic life below. The park is arranged in 6 inch level lifts, set below high tide, inviting the visitor to explore the rich action.

This competition entry for a new park places a tidal cove where the North Shore Long Island village meets the water. The Tidal Cove is intended not as a metaphor or a theme park, but as a series of authentic experiences, shaped by the daily cycles of the tides. At the heart of the park, is a series of trays, a tidal strand, sometimes submerged, sometimes disclosed.

On these trays, covered and uncovered by the Water, will be deposits from the sea, both natural and manmade, artifacts, sculptures, ecological experiments and growth strata, tidal pools, and rock outcroppings to be explored from the gangways above, or even from within the trays themselves, tides and weather permitting. At low tide, a series of smaller bodies of water is revealed, an estuary and a group of tidal pools where local scientists and artists are encourage to set up experiments and events which elucidate the life of and in the Water.

The gently elevated path of the Harborwalk acts as the undulating bayside border of the cove. The Harborwalk joins the village to the ferry, as it bridges over the cove and meanders past the excitement of the marina and skirts under the bow of the Regina Maris.