As beautiful as the plans are, it’s concerning that a billionaire like Barry Diller can decide to build by fiat (and with $40 million in public funds) a lavish park off Manhattan at the pier where Titanic survivors came to shore, and for that reason it’s dubious. Just as interesting: Dial back just a little over two years ago to another waterlogged disaster, when Hurricane Sandy struck the city, and imagine such an island scheme even being suggested then. The wonder at that point was whether Manhattan was long for this world. I guess, in some ways, it’s good we can forget tragedy, but we don’t want to forget entirely. From Oliver Wainwright at the Guardian:

“There’s a combination, it seems, of trees and water and fairytale stories told by a charming inventor, that persuades people to part with many millions – and allows conventional urban planning to be gleefully suspended.

No sooner has the cloud of fairydust surrounding London’s garden bridge proposal begun to settle – after Lambeth council granted half of it planning permission last week (Westminster, across the river, has yet to decide) – than Thomas Heatherwick has sown the seeds for a second magical park to sprout from a river, this time in New York.

It is another vision that could come straight from the set of Avatar – fecund flowerbeds erupting from mushroom-shaped columns, their canopies joining to support parkland above the water. But instead of two toadstools spanning the Thames, there will be a thicket of 300 fungi rising from five to 20 metres above the Hudson River to form an undulating platform of parks and performance spaces.

Replacing the crumbling ruin of Pier 54, where survivors of the Titanic landed, Heatherwick’s Pier 55 park promises to be a ‘place of discovery, where visitors can wander and wonder,’ with ‘places to lounge, eat lunch, or just lie in the grass,’ building on the appetite for al fresco lazing proven by the success of the nearby High Line park.”