Velodrama

project: Red Hook Bicycle Master Plan Competition

date: 2008

scale: Infrastructure

status: Speculative

design: Ramiro Diaz-Granados

In 2008 the Forum for Urban Design held a competition to re-imagine Red Hook as the most bicycle friendly neighborhood in New York. The goal was not only to make cycling the predominant mode of transportation in Red Hook but to make it a destination for urban cyclists and foster sustainable development.

We see this as an opportunity to speculate on the potential of consolidating infrastructure and mobility into new mechanisms for urban growth through cycling. The mobility and culture associated with the bicycle is gaining ground as more and more people are cultivating a lifestyle out of it. The speed associated with the bicycle, both in terms of movement and the experience of the city, seems to negotiate the leisurely pace of the pedestrian and the aggressive pace of the automobile. Our proposal elevates the bicycle into a network of suspension bridges that spreads across Red Hook and behaves like an epiphytic system, atop the existing city, distributing utilities and performing sustainable functions.

The suspension bridges are a hybrid compression/tension system that employs the role of surface for morphological opportunity and performative ends. Morphologically, the introduction of surface to this problem provides sectional and volumetric variability. Performance-wise it provides for sustainable functions such as the collection of rain.