Jon Kaminsky Powered Parkland: The NYC Museum of Steam

E 15th Street & Avenue C, East Village

The project is located in Manhattan’s East Village neighbourhood in the shadow of the derelict steam operations plant. The parkland exposes the hidden infrastructure of NYC’s district steam system and provides an alternative to the cities extreme seasonality, smoothing the winter climate through the use of heated landscapes that warm at varying speeds. Steam powered mechanisms create tempered micro environments for the neighbouring community to use recreationally and to grow crops. There are heated bathing pools and warmed and cooled enveloping landscapes with ephemeral steam celebrations which create adaptive multi-use environments. 

The powered park is also part of a archaeological trench and ‘display cabinet’ for industrial archeologists who are slowly dismantling the redundant steam plant adjacent to the site. These artefacts are reused and incorporated into new structures within systems of energy storage and transference within the park’s steam-powered landscape.

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