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As a land-water intervention, Weaving Shores aims to slow down the East River tides along Brooklyn, New York. Choosing to site it in Greenpoint, New York, and integrating it into Mayor Bloomberg’s PLAN NYC, the intervention allowed us an opportunity to provide the public space the plan calls for, while finding a solution for the environmental issues along the river’s coast. At the core of Weaving Shores is the Kissing Buoy—a floating concrete buoy that aggregates to create a surface. The project required us to design, cast, and prototype the Kissing Buoy.
Originally, Greenpoint was a marshland comprised of coastal land that ‘fingered’ into the water. Due to marshland draining, the tides of the East River increased dramatically. Weaving Shores adopts a land-river strategy that ‘fingers’ into the river to help slow down the currents, and returns them to their original condition.
Section Through Unit & Joint Illustrating Rope Connection
Precedent Study Diagram
To evaluate the appropriate proportion of foam to rockite for proper buoyancy, we conducted an experiment: we began with a proportion of 4:1 (foam to rockite) and removed foam a little at a time to find the appropriate amount needed to float the prototype the desired 3” above water. The buoy contains more rockite at the bottom to ensure that it floats properly and creates a stable surface. While the prototype contained an inner mold of solid foam, the experiment required us to design a hollow inner mold that can be filled with plastic bottles or bags.
To ensure that the prototype could float, we cast it from rockite with an inner foam mold.
Prototyping and Fabrication
Cast Prototype
Detailed River Section
River Section
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WEAVING SHORES: THE KISSING BUOYS
Columbia GSAPP Fall 2011 with Joanne Hayek Bernadette Ma and Anne We
Formworks Critic Josh Draper