Queens Plaza
Long Island City, New York

Margie Ruddick's office is facilitating a team of designers, engineers, scientists, and artists in reconceiving of the landscape at Queens Plaza, where the Queensborough Bridge sets down in Long Island City. The team has conceived of the site as an urban green machine; two new urban parks as well as an overall greening of the massive urban infrastructure are included in the scope. New structures will be designed to latch on to, cut through, build under, grow over, and link vertically, in order to make use of interstitial spaces and underused sites. Slivers of green, patchwork gardens, and strips of water retention, all working within restructured patterns of movement, will reinvent the site, providing layers of vegetation to clean air and stormwater and mitigate noise pollution.

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Integrating water, wind, solar, and other environmental systems within the layered infrastructure of the site, the project will green and humanize the spaces at Queens Plaza.

The project spans one mile from the Plaza and Sunnyside Yards, through Baby Park under the Queensboro Bridge, and down to the East River waterfront.