Inside Third & Bond: Week 131

It’s May 20, 2025, a sunny Tuesday and you’ve just finished reviewing the latest tell-all book on Atlantic Yards. You call up a friend and plan to meet at the Shuck Shack for a late lunch, then take a sail down the Gowanus, maybe do a bit of fishing. Of course the line at the Shuck Shack is legendary, completely eclipsing the once-upon-a-time Shake Shack, so you check Google’s NowCam. Lookin’ good. As you trot across the Third Street bridge you catch a glimpse of good ol’ Marty gliding by on a gondola and waving at the kids playing on the shore. Election season already. That means longer lines at the Shuck Shack all summer as politicians come out to brag about their connection to New Gowanus. As if anyone remembers the old Gowanus…
Such are the dreams inspired by MOMA’s Rising Currents exhibit, currently on display. We went there recently with one of the design teams for a personal tour (ARO and dlandstudio have an incredible vision for lower Manhattan) and took some extra time to delight in SCAPE Studio’s Oyster-Tecture. Rising Currents is the result of a collaboration between MoMA and P.S.1. Contemporary Art Center. The institutions selected five interdisciplinary design teams and assigned each an area of the city. The challenge was to envision interventions addressing the sea-level rise predicted as a result of global climate change. How can you soften the blow of higher and more powerful storm-induced waves? How can you change the built environment to better absorb or co-exist with the water? What buildings or pieces of land do you let sink into the sea?

SCAPE’s team, led by Kate Orff, transformed the Gowanus Canal, Northeast Palisade Bay and Buttermilk Channel into an underwater landscape of oyster nets reminiscent of coral reefs. The oyster nets, saturated with oysters, would create variation in the sea floor, attenuating powerful storm waves…

…The habitat created by the nets would encourage the rebound of a native species of oysters that would clean the murky water by virtue of filtration feeding. And as SCAPE’s future-set photos and State Park maps indicate, they could one day be delicious. When is that day? Well, the State Park map indicates the Shuck Shack’s presence in 2025 but notes that oysters from the canal aren’t recommended for eating. The photo from 2054 shows hipsters (why can’t they look different in the future??) slurping up the tasty treat.

We appreciated this exhibit not only for its bold yet grounded ideas but also because we have a special fondness for the legendary Gowanus oysters. Last year a group of Pratt Institute students set about designing wallpaper specifically for Third + Bond, deriving inspiration from the neighborhood. The result is a gorgeous pattern of oyster-like outlines with just enough undulation to suggest viewing shells through rippling water. The wallpaper, printed by Carnegie as a donation to Pratt on PVC-free paper, is textured and lovely. There are two different versions, one along the hall of the 2-bed, 2-bath model and the other acting like a two-dimensional canopy over the master bed in the 3+bed, 3-bath model.

Further review of SCAPE’s State Park map, to be published by the Department of Oyster Production (we can only imagine the fees they’ll be charging), indicates the Gowanus South Yacht Club at the site of Hudson’s old office on Third St at the canal, an oyster company at the former Toll Brothers site, and live/work lofts on the block to the north. What is to become of Third + Bond? Sadly, its future as predicted by SCAPE was not revealed to us. The map cuts off right at the street corner.

In our version of SCAPE’s story, Third + Bond is unchanged except that the street trees are taller and fuller, and there’s both bike and kayak racks on the sidewalk. While 2054 and even 2025 are almost unimaginable to us, even with SCAPE putting images in our head, we can imagine that Third + Bond will still be there… and we’ll still be blogging about it.

Inside Third & Bond: Weeks 1-130 [Brownstoner]

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