In 2004 park officials retained landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates to design the new waterfront for Brooklyn Bridge Park. His solution to mute the traffic noise coming off the BQE was to erect a physical barrier between the roadway and the landscaped area, but some folks have declared that this current $7 million solution has numerous problems (most notably that it simply won't work).
Earlier this week the Manhattan-based architecture firm Studio for Civil Architecture along with Hage Engineering released their proposal for a visual and sound barrier between the BQE and Brooklyn Bridge Park, dubbed the Brooklyn Bridge Connector. The barrier includes the use of steel arches, sound barrier shells, and a solar canopy. The architectural contraption even comes with its own website that simulates real-world conditions at the project site! The architect told the Brooklyn Paper that his proposal would "reduce current BQE noise from 85 decibels to 65 decibels—five decibels quieter" than the Van Valkenburgh noise-blocking mountains.
Curbed reported this week that this isn't the only silencing solution out there. There's also this eco-friendly one that includes a bio fuel gas station, and the design uses vegetation and trees to absorb both the noise and car exhaust. Some of the renderings for this green plan are above, and there's a full set here.
File under: Neat—but will it ever happen? There's likely to be many more proposals by the time this section of the BQE is actually set to get some work done (Cubed notes that's around 2018). The public scoping process for the renovation begins sometime in the next two months, during which time more suggestions will be welcome.
