Developers Soloviev Group and Mohegan have announced plans for a four-tower designed by BIG, located along Manhattan's East River waterfront.

This transformative Freedom Plaza project, which will have a new public and cultural center, a new open and green space in this busy area, with proposals to add a Museum of Freedom and Democracy within the park, will be carried out on 2.74 hectares near the United Nations Complex overlooking FDR Drive and the East River between 38th and 41st Streets on First Avenue.
Additionally, the proposal designed by BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group includes affordable housing units, two hotels, shops, and restaurants. Developed by Soloviev Group and Mohegan, the Freedom Plaza development reimagines one of Manhattan's largest undeveloped parcels, measuring 6.77 acres (2.74 hectares) located south of the United Nations Headquarters in the Midtown neighborhood East.

The program proposes a pair of hotel towers and homes connected by an elevated bridge, overlooking the Queens shore with a park and a small Museum of Freedom and Democracy in the plaza at ground level. A total of 4.77 acres (1.95 hectares) of publicly accessible space will be included, flanked by a south-facing 1,325-unit residential complex. Nearly half (40%) will be dedicated to affordable housing, according to the project announcement.

Once completed, the two residential towers, with a total of 50 and 60 floors each, will be an architectural homage to the area's characteristic mid-20th-century office projects with scratched glass and aluminum facades. Its 51-story sister hotels will be finished with metal cladding and a rooftop green space.


Freedom Plaza by BIG. Photograph by BIG.
 

Project description by BIG

BIG unveils the design for Freedom Plaza, a plan for a new civic and cultural hub along Manhattan’s East River. Designed by BIG and developed by Soloviev Group and Mohegan Sun, Freedom Plaza sits on a waterfront site south of the United Nations headquarters in Manhattan’s Midtown East neighborhood. The development will bring a 4.77-acre public waterfront open space designed by OJB Landscape Architecture with an in-park Museum of Freedom and Democracy, two residential towers with much-needed affordable housing, two hotels including New York’s first Banyan Tree, 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.


Freedom Plaza by BIG. Photograph by Negativ.

“When Le Corbusier, Niemeyer, and Harrison designed the UN Secretariat Building, they grafted an oasis of international modernism onto the dense urban grid of Manhattan, creating a park on the river framed by towers and pavilions. Due to the nature of the work of the UN, access to that park – although open to all nations – remains necessarily restricted, for good reasons.

With our design for Freedom Plaza, we continue to build on these architectural principles by uniting three city blocks to form a public green space reaching from 1st Avenue to the East River overlook, creating a green connection to the water’s edge.

Bookending the park are two pairs of towers, joined at the base or top and each framing a corner plaza: one showcasing the life of the city and the other forming an urban gate from the city to the upper park and East River beyond. Balanced on a perch overlooking the river, the Museum of Freedom and Democracy neighbors the towers and celebrates the origin and evolution of one of the most impactful inventions of mankind and our continuous struggle to build, maintain, and protect the institutions that uphold it.

We are incredibly honored and thrilled to be part of the team that can envision a new major public space in this great city, contribute to the iconic skyline of Manhattan’s riverfront, and imagine the architecture of the museum celebrating one of mankind’s greatest inventions: Democracy.”

Bjarke Ingels, Founder & Creative Director, BIG

More information

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Architects
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BIG – Bjarke Ingels Group. Partners-in-Charge.- Bjarke Ingels, Martin Voelkle.
Project Manager.- Andreas Buettner.
Project Designer.- Kristian Hindsberg.
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Project team
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Ahmad Tabbakh, Alejandro Guadarrama, Alvaro Velosa, Bernardo Schuhmacher, Brendan Murphy, Cheng Zhong, Hudson Parris, Jan Klaska, 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.
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Collaborators
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Adamson Associates Architects, OJB Landscape Architecture, The Friedmutter Group, HBA, Thornton Tomasetti, WSP, Langan, Rizzo-Brookbridge, Herrick Feinstein, Kilograph.
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Developer
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Soloviev Group y Mohegan Sun.
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Area
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6.77-acre.
2,74 Ha.
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Dates
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2024.
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Location
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1st Avenue to the East River. South of the United Nations headquarters in Manhattan’s Midtown East neighborhood. Between 38th and 41st Street at First Avenue. New York, USA.
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Rendering
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BIG, Negativ, Bucharest.
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Bjarke Ingels (born in Copenhagen, 1974) studied architecture at the Royal Academy in Copenhagen and at the School of Architecture of Barcelona, ​​obtaining his degree as an architect in 1998. He is the founder of the BIG architecture studio - (Bjarke Ingels Group), studio founded in 2005, after co-founding PLOT Architects in 2001 with his former partner Julien de Smedt, whom he met while working at the prestigious OMA studio in Rotterdam.

Bjarke has designed and completed award-winning buildings worldwide, and currently his studio is based with venues in Copenhagen and New York. His projects include The Mountain, a residential complex in Copenhagen, and the innovative Danish Maritime Museum in Elsinore.

With the PLOT study, he won the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale in 2004, and with BIG he has received numerous awards such as the ULI Award for Excellence in 2009. Other prizes are the Culture Prize of the Crown Prince of Denmark in 2011; and Along with his architectural practice, Bjarke has taught at Harvard University, Yale University, Columbia University and Rice University and is an honorary professor at the Royal Academy of Arts, School of Architecture in Copenhagen.

In 2018, Bjarke received the Knight's Cross of the Order of Dannebrog granted by Her Majesty Queen Margrethe II. He is a frequent public speaker and continues to give lectures at places such as TED, WIRED, AMCHAM, 10 Downing Street or the World Economic Forum. In 2018, Bjarke was appointed Chief Architectural Advisor by WeWork to advise and develop the design vision and language of the company for buildings, campuses and neighborhoods around the world.

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