FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Media Contacts:
Andrea Schwan, Andrea Schwan Inc., +1 212.924.1033, [email protected]
Machteld Kors, UNStudio, +31 20.570.20.40, [email protected]
MAYOR BLOOMBERG AND HOLLAND’S PRINCE OF
ORANGE AND PRINCESS MÁXIMA TO DEDICATE
NEW AMSTERDAM PLEIN & PAVILION AT THE BATTERY
Permanent Gift from the Kingdom of the Netherlands to the People of New York
Pays Tribute to Enduring 400-Year Friendship
New York, NY... In a major highlight of
NY400, the Dutch-American 2009 celebration
of the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s
arrival in New York Harbor, The Prince of
Orange and Princess Máxima of The
Netherlands will join New York City Mayor
Michael R. Bloomberg, US Under Secretary of
State Judith A. McHale, Dutch Minister for
European Affairs & International Foreign
Policy Frans Timmermans, New York City
Parks & Recreation Commissioner Adrian
Benepe, and New York City Department of
Transportation Commissioner Jeanette SadikKhan on September 9th to unveil and
dedicate the New Amsterdam Plein & Pavilion
at the Southern tip of Manhattan.
The unveiling ceremony of the structural
exterior of the Pavilion will take place at
11:00AM (EST). It is located at Peter Minuit
Plaza at The Battery, in front of the Staten
Island Ferry.
Commissioned by The Battery Conservancy,
the New Amsterdam Plein & Pavilion is a gift
from the Kingdom of the Netherlands to New
York City in honor of four centuries years of
friendship and a mutual passion for the values
of innovation and creativity, diversity and
openness, entrepreneurship and progress.
(Top) The sculptural exterior of New Amsterdam Pavilion will be
unveiled on September 9, 2009. (The Battery Conservancy)
(Bottom) Model of New Amsterdam Pavilion. (UNStudio)
New Amsterdam Plein & Pavilion
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New Amsterdam Pavilion Rendering (UNStudio)
“To mark the deep bond between our country and this great city in this great nation, we want
to present the City of New York with a lasting token of our friendship,” said His Royal Highness
Prince Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands. “The Dutch pavilion symbolizes both our shared
legacy and our joint commitment to the future.”
“The Pavilion is a permanent gift with which we want to mark our shared 400 years of history
but most of all our shared vision of the future,” said Dutch Cabinet Minister Frans
Timmermans. “It stands as a monument to our friendship and serves as a reminder of the
open-mind and entrepreneurial spirit of the Dutch-American pioneers.”
When completed in the Spring of 2010, the Plein & Pavilion will be a dramatic new public
destination on the Harbor where more than 5 million people a year - including 70,000 daily
commuters and 2 million annual tourists - will find an extraordinary “outdoor living room” for
spontaneous and scheduled activities, public markets, seating and shade, and a gleaming
white, iconic, state-of-the-art pavilion for information and food, all designed by internationally
celebrated Dutch architect Ben van Berkel of UNStudio, Amsterdam. The site will be unique
among the city’s many public spaces – a landscaped intermodal transportation hub of the 21st
century, where bicycles, buses, the subway and water transportation intersect with cultural
offerings in a singular expression of daring but lyrical design. Handel Architects LLP, New York
serves as associate architect, working in collaboration with UNStudio.
New Amsterdam Plein & Pavilion
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"This 400th anniversary is an opportunity for us to join with our partners in the Netherlands
to celebrate our city's heritage," said Parks & Recreation Commissioner Adrian Benepe. "New
Amsterdam Plein & Pavilion at The Battery will enliven our celebration and focus attention on
the place where the Dutch first settled. I join Mayor Bloomberg in thanking the Kingdom of
the Netherlands, The Battery Conservancy, and Ben Van Berkel and UNStudio of Amsterdam
for bringing this dynamic cultural attraction to Lower Manhattan."
Warrie Price, President of The Battery Conservancy, said, “The Netherlands is a country that
sets global standards for how cities and countries can regenerate themselves through the
professional strength of innovative and talented designers, and through the force and beauty
of the natural world. The Battery, where New York City was born, began its own revitalization
with the work of famed Dutch garden designer Piet Oudolf, who created with us the largest
perennial gardens in North America, free and open to the public. With the New Amsterdam
Plein & Pavilion, we are delighted to continue our mission of design excellence, privileged to
expand our connection to the great tradition of Dutch design, and honored to bring to New
Yorkers and guests from around the world the joy of nature, the pleasure in community and
the value of great modern architecture.”
The Battery’s Peter Minuit Plaza is named for the enterprising Dutch Director-General who in
1626 consolidated the early settlements at the tip of Manhattan – a grouping that came to be
known as New Amsterdam. This destination is, in the words of architect Ben van Berkel, “the
ideal site for a permanent commemoration of 400 years of Dutch history in New York,
because it is steeped in a sense of a shared past and looks directly toward the harbor where
Henry Hudson sailed, but is also entirely focused on the future by virtue of its role as a
modern transportation hub within the constantly changing scene of Lower Manhattan. This is
a site where history meets the future.”
About the Plein & Pavilion
UNStudio’s design for New Amsterdam Plein & Pavilion creates a 5,000 square-foot, carefully
programmed space located within Peter Minuit Plaza. To express the interplay of history and
future in this location, the landscape architects of New York City Department of Parks &
Recreation Manhattan Capital Projects have conceived a stone-paved civic platform – plein, in
Dutch – with walkways featuring engraved quotations from Russell Shorto’s acclaimed book
The Island at the Center of the World. A carved stone map of Castello’s New Amsterdam will
grace the entrance to the Plein to provide historical context.
Within the open space of the Plein, visitors will find UNStudio-designed seating and tables.
These will surround a highly sculptural pavilion with an expressive, undulating roofline and
curving walls – a compact little building with the authority of a major landmark, evoking a
flower opening to its surroundings. The pavilion will be equipped with an electronic facade
LED system that allows for a constantly changing light show at night, “an experience that will
carry the animation and drama of the day into the evening,” according to van Berkel.
UNStudio incorporated Corian, an innovative design material developed by DuPont and here
thermoformed to render exceptionally daring horizontal and vertical surfaces that contribute
to the Pavilion’s iconic impact.
New Amsterdam Plein & Pavilion
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The pavilion will be
equipped with an
electronic facade LED
system that allows for a
constantly changing light
show at night.
(UNStudio)
Van Berkel’s pavilion will offer, according to Warrie Price of The Battery Conservancy, “a superb
culinary experience, great visitor orientation information and materials, and an iconic,
recognizable spot for residents and visitors to rendezvous.”
New Amsterdam Plein will also feature berms and perennial garden planting beds, designed by
New York City Parks & Recreation using the palette of Piet Oudolf, who created The Battery
Bosque Gardens and the Battery’s Gardens of Remembrance.
About the Architect
Founded in 1988 by Ben van Berkel and Caroline Bos, UNStudio is
an internationally admired, global architecture, design and urban
planning firm based in Amsterdam, comprised of a forward-thinking
network of architects, planners, development experts, industrial
designers, engineers, art historians, philosophers, writers and
researchers. According to a critic of The New York Times, UNStudio
“has so far come closest to fulfilling the dream of a truly elastic
world, one in which the boundaries between work and play, private
and public life have all but melted away.”
Ben van Berkel (Koos Breukel)
UNStudio’s unique, collaborative, interdisciplinary approach has yielded acclaimed museums
and cultural centers, private houses, residential complexes and commercial buildings across
Europe and Asia, as well as master plans for urban redevelopments in Spain, the Netherlands
and Italy. The firm’s diversity is evident not only in such landmark buildings as The Möbius
House outside Amsterdam (1998), the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart, Germany (2006),
and the Theater Agora in Lelystad, Netherlands (2007), but in such disparate projects as
sculptural bridges in Rotterdam and Dresden; the revitalization of
the harbor front in Genoa; an 18-story flagship in Tokyo for Louis Vuitton; a spa hotel in the
Swiss Alps; and revolutionary sculptural kitchen fixtures and appliances for B&B Italia and
Alessi.
The work of UNStudio has been prominently featured in exhibitions around the world, including
the landmark “Un-Private House” survey at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, and in
publications in dozens of languages.
New Amsterdam Plein & Pavilion
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About The Battery and The Battery Conservancy
Warrie Price, TBC President
The Battery is a 25-acre waterfront park and the cradle of New
York City history. Located at the tip of Manhattan overlooking New
York Harbor, The Battery hosted Dutch settlers when they arrived
at Manhattan Island in 1626 and established New Amsterdam.
Today with the leadership of The Battery Conservancy, a nonprofit
organization established in 1994 to partner with government to
design and rebuild these historic acres, the park is the largest and
most dynamic public place in Lower Manhattan. It is the front lawn
of Downtown and a hub of harbor access and cultural tourism. Over
five million people, including residents, office workers, school
groups, and tourists from around the world, visit the park and its
major landmark, Castle Clinton National Monument, every year.
The Battery Conservancy, with its partners at the city, state and federal levels, has raised over
$111M to revitalize the park. Expansive lawns, overarching shade trees, vast perennial gardens,
waterfront promenades with sweeping views and cultural programs will soon be complemented by
The Battery Bikeway connecting the East and West Sides of Manhattan; the much-anticipated
SeaGlass ride; and a remarkable new Battery Playspace, designed by Frank Gehry.
Many cultural institutions are within walking distance of The Battery. Attractions include the South
Street Seaport, the New York Stock Exchange, the Smithsonian’s Museum of the American Indian,
the Museum of Jewish Heritage, the Staten Island Ferry, and the soon–to–be–restored Pier A.
They all radiate from the Battery, which has historically been called the "emerald doorstep of the
metropolis".
The Battery will become a hub of waterborne transportation for New York Harbor. Castle Clinton
presently serves as a busy ticketing center for three million passengers who annually board
ferries to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. Connections between New York State Heritage
Area sites, the National Parks of New York Harbor, and New Jersey’s Liberty State Park, are also
in the planning stages.
The Battery’s 70,000 square
feet of gardens are the largest
organic, free, public perennial
gardens in North America.
(The Battery Conservancy)
New Amsterdam Plein & Pavilion
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About NY400
The presentation of the pavilion by Their Royal Highnesses the Prince of Orange and Princess
Máxima of The Netherlands and Dutch Cabinet Minister Frans Timmermans to Mayor Bloomberg
and Under Secretary of State McHale is part of NY400 Week, a week-long, citywide celebration
of events and activities to mark the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s arrival on a Dutch
ship at the shores of what is now New York Harbor in September 1609. New Yorkers and
visitors will enjoy Dutch festivals, sailing races, dance parties, free bike rentals, museum
exhibitions and other activities on land and sea as they celebrate the shared history and
connections of New York City and the Dutch. NY400 Week culminates with the first-ever Harbor
Day on Sunday, September 13 at six waterfront sites across the City.
The public can obtain additional information about NY400 at www.ny400.org.
For additional information or to obtain images for publication, please contact:
Media Contacts:
Andrea Schwan, Andrea Schwan Inc., New York
+1 212.924.1033, [email protected]
Machteld Kors, UNStudio, Amsterdam
+31 20.570.20.40, [email protected]
Katherine Cannella, The Battery Conservancy, New York
+1 212.344.3491 x14, [email protected]
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