Resilient Parks – Design Opportunities for Bushwick Inlet Park

FBIP 2025 Seminar Series “WHERE’S OUR PARK?” PAST→ PRESENT→ FUTURE

Free registration required below.

Sea level rise, storm surges and cloudburst events. These threats are design challenges but also present an opportunity for innovative and engaging park design.

Join Friends of Bushwick Inlet Park for a panel discussion with:

Stephen Whitehouse, BIP 86 Kent Ave landscape designer, urban planner, principal, Starr Whitehouse Landscape Architects and Planners

Dr. Marcha Johnson, landscape architect and ecological restorationist, NYC Parks & Recreation

Both panelists have extensive experience in designing spaces within the public realm to help mitigate increasing threats from atmospheric changes affecting human and landscape interaction with water. With them we will explore their work, including revisiting Stephen’s concept for BIP’s 86 Kent Ave, and design philosophy in considering future waterfront park manifestations in the face of these challenges.

Stephen Whitehouse is a landscape architect and urban planner whose diverse pursuits share a concern for the environmental quality and social vitality of places. He formerly served as Chief of Planning for the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation, where he managed the expansion of the USTA National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows and launched the City’s Greenway system. Since co-founding Starr Whitehouse with Laura Starr, he has worked with public and private clients to create dynamic urban districts and engaging landscapes that connect people to nature.

Rather than focusing on a single aspect of the work, he’s always been most fascinated by the juncture points. “Natural systems, patterns of settlement, infrastructure – seeing all these come together to make a place is interesting to me, not just as abstract concepts,” he says, “but in terms of seeing good results at the end.” He describes his role in terms of junctures as well. “I’m the translator,” he says. “I serve as the mediator between the specialists and the public. I like communicating with people, and seeing things shaped by the creative interactions of people and institutions.”

Marcha Johnson, PhD, ASLA is a NYC landscape architect and ecological restorationist with about 40 years of specializing in shoreline designs with high habitat value in all 5 boroughs, both as a professional and a pro-bono advisor/ volunteer. Marcha’s book, Coastal Change, Ocean Conservation and Resilient Communities, co-edited with Amanda Bayley and published in December 2016 by Springer, highlights ways to better understand and respect coastal landscapes, design spaces affected by sea level rise and storms and live more wisely along the water. She serves on the Advisory Board for Riverkeeper, and on the Technical Advisory Board Hudson River Park, and has presented her waterfront designs, ideas on conserving urban shorelines and themes from her book at local, national and international conferences. An adjunct professor in City College of New York’s School of Architecture since 1990, she teaches graduate courses in landscape architecture and sustainability.