Project by Alyssa Duran
This project proposes a reimagining of Four Freedoms Park as an architecture that operates within environmental change rather than resisting it. Located at the southern tip of Roosevelt Island, the site exists in a tidal condition where the East River rises and falls twice daily, continuously reshaping the island’s edge. Instead of reinforcing barriers against water, the intervention introduces a porous, dam-like structure that allows tidal flow to enter and withdraw from the site, transforming the park into a temporal landscape. As water levels shift, the architecture changes in form, atmosphere, and accessibility, revealing land as a temporary condition rather than a fixed platform.
Through this openness, the monument enters a new relationship with light, air, and water, becoming part of an atmospheric continuum where sky, river, and ground overlap. Tidal pools form along the granite edges, enabling the return of algae, shellfish, birds, and shoreline vegetation once displaced by landfill and hard infrastructure. The park functions simultaneously as memorial, coastline, and ecological system. By aligning architecture with tidal cycles and environmental processes, the project reframes freedom as a condition defined by adaptation, shared access, and continual renewal rather than permanence or cont
