Image courtesy of The Trust for Governor’s Island.

Among a growing chorus of futuristic transportation suggestions meant to meet the city’s exploding need to get from point A to point B, Crain’s reports that the city’s Economic Development Corp. is studying a gondola that would operate from lower Manhattan to Governors Island. Though the idea has been proposed before, anticipation of a planned redevelopment project on the 172-acre island has fostered a new urgency.

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Renderings courtesy of Austin+Mergold in collaboration with Maria Park, and consulting engineers Chris Earls (Cornell) and Scott Hughes (Silman)

“Oculi” is the latest winner of FIGMENT’s City of Dreams competition, an annual design contest challenging architecture and design firms to build a pavilion out of recycled materials to be assembled and displayed on Governor’s Island. Last summer, visitors to the island were graced with a pavilion made out of more than 300,000 aluminum cans (the number of cans used in NYC in an hour), melted down and cast into cracked clay. This year, the competition is highlighting metal grain bins. A design by the firm Austin+Mergold, in collaboration with Maria Park (of Cornell University) and consulting engineers Chris Earls and Scott Hughes, will reuse old metal grain bins for a pavilion that establishes a visual connection between urban and rural ways of life.

Read more on the winning proposal

Photo of Governors Island via simplethrill on Flickr

Since Governors Island first opened in 2005, transforming the 172-acre piece of land in the New York Harbor into a public space has been slow. However, after a 40-acre park with a playground opened last year the ball has officially started rolling. According to Crain’s, the Trust for Governors Island recently released two requests for proposals aimed at making the waterfront location a destination for entertainment and cultural activities. The trust is offering licenses for up to three years during the island’s season, which runs from May 1 through October 31.

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The 172-acre Governors Island first opened as a publicly accessible outdoor space in 2005, but it’s still open just 120 days per year, with the city spending over 10 years trying to figure out what to do with the rest of this teeming-with-potential site. Just last year a new 40-acre park and playground opened, and the area is now ready for its next major revitalization. As Crain’s reports, the Trust for Governors Island will roll out a plan to create a 24/7 community with even more public parks, nonprofit tenants related to the site’s maritime history, restaurants, and five million square feet of new commercial, office, and education space.

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From her back window on Columbia Street in Brooklyn, artist Nancy Nowacek could see Governors Island and Buttermilk Channel (the strait connecting Brooklyn to the island), and it seemed incredibly close. In fact, it’s the equivalent of only about four city blocks away. So since 2012, Nowacek has been working on her vision of building Citizen Bridge over New York Harbor, a floating modular pedestrian bridge over the 1,400-foot span from Red Hook to Governor’s Island.

In what is currently planned as a one-day-only event, she sees Citizen Bridge as a completely new way to experience New York City harbor, rather than seeing it from the shore, from a bridge above, or from a boat. As noted by Mental Floss, Nowacek has turned to Kickstarter to raise money for a pilot phase. The project’s goal of $25,000 would fund a proof-of-concept, which is the final phase before launching for real.  So far, they’ve prototyped seven bridge designs in full-scale sections.

Find out more about this plan to walk on water

With forecasts threatening snow (?!) on this fine late March weekend, the idea that an “army flame thrower” was among the historic methods the city used to make piles of the formerly-white stuff disappear is oddly satisfying.

Moar! this way

Governors Island is one of those magical NYC places that comes to life in the spring after a long winter hibernation. And part of its reawakening will be the revealing of the City of Dreams Pavilion, a futuristic-looking art installation where visitors can gather.

For the fifth consecutive year, FIGMENT has teamed with the Emerging New York Architects Committee (ENYA) of the American Institute of Architects NY Chapter (AIANY) and the Structural Engineers Association of New York (SEAoNY) to host a competition for the pavilion. Entrants were asked to design a temporary architectural structure to hold 50+ people, provide shade and rain cover, using sustainable materials. And just this week the five finalists were announced.

Take a look at the final five designs here