Freedom Plaza | BIG | Bjarke Ingels Group

Freedom Plaza will create a new civic and cultural hub along Manhattan’s East River. The development will bring a 4.77-acre public waterfront open space – roughly the size of Bryant Park – to an area historically lacking green space, with plans for an in-park Museum of Freedom and Democracy, much-needed affordable housing, two hotels, retail and restaurants. With a below-grade gaming area connected to the hotels, Freedom Plaza is one of several projects vying for three downstate gaming licenses in and around New York City.

Designed by BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group and developed by Soloviev Group and Mohegan, Freedom Plaza sits on the largest undeveloped plot of land in Manhattan, a waterfront 6.7-acre site south of the United Nations headquarters in Manhattan’s Midtown East neighborhood. BIG designed the museum, the podium and the four towers that frame the public green space designed by OJB Landscape Architecture. Two residential towers rising 50 and 60 stories will include 1,325 apartments, nearly 40% of which will be designated as permanently affordable housing. Two 51-story hotel towers will accommodate New York City’s first five-star Banyan Tree hotel and a Mohegan hotel, plus a conference and entertainment center.

The Freedom Plaza towers align with the orthogonal grid of Manhattan to extend the view corridors from Midtown eastward to the East River and Queens. The design respects the celebrated UN complex to the north while also adding playful and sculptural elements to the waterfront. The two residential towers pay homage to modernist New York City buildings of the 1950s and 1960s, with striped glass and aluminum facades connected at the base by a podium that will house a food market and retail. The two hotel towers clad in a warm metal finish connect at the roof, creating visual unity between the buildings.

The buildings within Freedom Plaza are placed at the perimeter of the site to maximize space for the multilevel, universally accessible green spaces designed by OJB, which include a children’s play area, dog run and event lawn with a bandshell for hosting al fresco events. The landscaping is designed to host a native botanical overlay and climate-adaptive species, with gardens providing food and habitat for pollinators year-round. The sculpture program and an amphitheater below the museum will offer cultural experiences for visitors and neighborhood residents alike, while educational programs centered around the native flora and sustainable practices emphasize the park’s commitment to environmental consciousness. Restaurants, a food market, community spaces, a daycare and other amenities line the northern and southern edges of the park.

At the heart of Freedom Plaza’s green space will be the Museum of Freedom and Democracy. Taking the shape of a Möbius strip, the museum winds on top of itself, allowing for outdoor walking paths. The museum forms a spiraling and infinite geometry over the amphitheater as a symbol of unity, and takes cues from the traditional Greek theater as a nod to those who created democracy thousands of years ago.

As hotel guests arrive, they enter a light-filled “forest atrium” that brings the outdoor public space inside through skylights and floating planters. From this atrium, guests can access the various food and beverage outlets, convention and event spaces, gaming facilities, and street-level retail. To further ease traffic concerns, a special entrance to the resort facility will be established on the 41st Street side of the property.

The two hotel towers connect via a skybridge cantilevered over the East 41st St. and 1st Avenue corner of the site. The skybridge lobby features a dramatic multistory viewing platform with a glass floor and ceiling, and the Soloviev Foundation Art Gallery, while a 150,000-gallon infinity pool – one of the largest rooftop pools in North America – will be perched on the roof. Banyan Tree hotel amenities, including a spa and wellness center, restaurants and bars, and private gaming are also located in the bridge interior. Freedom Plaza intends to be an operational net-zero carbon development. The site is designed to use the East River as a heat sink and heat source to supplement the buildings’ heating, cooling and domestic hot water systems, which will reduce potable water demand by 24.5 million gallons annually. Stormwater capture and retention, as well as the park’s mature trees, will help minimize urban heat island effect. Freedom Plaza will also utilize a minimum of 20% electric vehicle charging stations for its onsite parking with capacity to scale to 60%.

Freedom Plaza is designed to meet the neighborhood’s needs for more public green spaces, better connectivity to the waterfront and more affordable housing while simultaneously creating an entertainment hub in the city. The project will extend BIG’s legacy on New York City’s waterfront, alongside the firm’s coastal projects that include the East Side Coastal Resiliency project, the Battery Park City Resiliency project and River Ring in Brooklyn.

PROJECT DATA

Size: 4,100,000 sq ft

Location: New York City, United States

Client: Soloviev Group and Mohegan

Collaborators: Adamson Associates Architects, OJB Landscape Architecture, The Friedmutter Group, HBA, Thornton Tomasetti, WSP, Langan, Rizzo-Brookbridge, Herrick Feinstein, Kilograph

BIG TEAM

Partners-in-Charge: Bjarke Ingels, Martin Voelkle

Project Manager: Andreas Buettner

Project Designer: Kristian Hindsberg

Team: Ahmad Tabbakh, Alejandro Guadarrama, Alvaro Velosa, Bernardo Schuhmacher, Brendan Murphy, Cheng Zhong, Hudson Parris, Jan Klaska, Jeff Tao, Joanne Zheng, Johannes Alexander Hackl, Omer Khan, Otilia Pupezeanu, Paul Heberle, Rafael Alvarez, SangHa Jung, Sparsh Gandhi, Sung-Hwan Um, Will Chuanrui Yu, Youjin Rhee, Beat Schenk, Margaret Tyrpa