Two and a half acres of park held over the Hudson on a hundred and thirty two concrete tulips, none of them the same height, so the ground rolls. Paths climb to an overlook, the Amph faces the water with its back to the city, and the works stand in glass beside the paths where the light comes off the river at the end of the day.
Little Island opened in May 2021 on the Hudson River at 13th Street, on the site of the old Pier 54, where survivors of the Titanic came ashore. Heatherwick Studio designed the park and MNLA the landscape, on 132 concrete tulips rising from the water. Barry Diller and Diane von Furstenberg paid for it. The amphitheater seats 687 and faces the river.
Source · Little Island ↗
The field of pot shaped concrete piles rising between fifteen and sixty two feet out of the Hudson, the rolling planted topography on top of them, the Amph facing the river, the two bridges from the esplanade at Thirteenth Street, the overlook at the high point, and Manhattan behind it all. Mood: golden hour on the river. Everything is procedural geometry with painted surfaces; nothing is a scan or a photograph. The room is an interpretation, and it hangs the New Yorkers the census recorded at this place first.