Freedom Plaza in New York

BIG Bjarke Ingels Group

Typologies Tower
City New York
Country United States

South of the United Nations Headquarters on Manhattan, along the East River, this ambitious scheme shows four towers – with apartments, hotels, and a casino – and the spiral-shaped Museum of Freedom and Democracy within a 1.9-hectare park. The site was occupied by the Waterside Generating Station, a power plant demolished in the 2000s, and after several architectural proposals came to nothing, it is the island’s largest unused piece of land.

Bjarke Ingels Group’s new design for the place has been promoted by the site’s owner, the Soloviev Group, and Mohegan, formerly known as Mohegan Gaming & Entertainment. Two of the four towers – rising 50 and 50 floors (167 and 198 meters) will be residential, containing 1,325 units, 40% of which will be affordable. Both are tributes to New York City’s modern buildings of the 1950s and 1960s, with facades of glass and aluminum, and they connect at the bottom through a retail podium.

The other two high-rises, 187 meters tall, will be hotels run by the firms Banyan Tree and Mohegan, and will connect high up through a skybridge crowned with an infinity pool, easily one of the biggest in North America. Inside the bridge are a spa, restaurants, and other amenities of the Banyan Tree hotel.

The skyscrapers enclose a landscaped public space designed by OJB Landscape Architecture, and at its center stands the Museum of Freedom and Democracy. The sculptural, spiral-shaped construction resembles a Möbius strip and atop it is an open-air auditorium, in homage of theaters in Ancient Greece and in reference to the Athenian origin of democracy. This institution will exhibit objects that together will present the history of democracy since Plato, including original fragments of the Berlin Wall.

Freedom Plaza is one of several projects competing for three gambling licenses in and around New York City. If the license is obtained and the zoning approved, construction could begin in 2025.