gNa+ proposes access to the water sheet and a new form of conveyance across Fort Point Channel to the south of Summer Street as a variation of the Channel's celebrated mechanical bridges. 

The Diurnal Piers are a series of linked, rotating, floating platforms that constitute broad platforms when retracted, and extend as occupiable horizontal scissor-lifts powered by the tides, allowing visitors to walk out onto the water, crossing from one side to the other when two Piers meet mid-Channel. The surprising transformation of the Piers from linear docks to sinusoidal figures on the water sheet alludes to uncoiling of the tides, eddies and flows of water, and to the meandering paths of Boston's Public Garden, comprehended from above not only by observers looking down from bridges and sea walls but also by the inhabitants of the buildings that flank the Channel. The Piers will create a new destination and landmark for the city, a place for a spectacular new experience of the waterfront as well as a platform and stage for performances and forms of artistic expression.  

 

The Piers comprise pairs of counter rotating diaphragms, hinged together at a center pivot and to other pairs, supported by standard dock floats. A rack and pinion mechanism engages vertical pilings or the Channel sea wall to harness the kinetic rising and falling with the tides, extending and retracting the Piers. As the tides lift and drop the floating Piers, pinions located at the pier anchorage engage a vertical rack fixed to either the sea wall or pilings. A drive train translates the rotation of the pinions to the anchored ends of the Pier platforms, spreading or contracting the Pier ends and retracting or extending the Piers. The switchback ramp system required to bring visitors from the top of the sea wall down to the water sheet shares the visual language of the criss-crossed Pier diaphragms.  Each Diurnal Pier will have LED illumination at its joints adding to the after dark glitter of lights on the Channel, emphasizing the compression and the extension of the Pier through the changing distances between the lights as the Piers extends and retracts. Eventually different Pier configurations and pairings could activate the Channel along its entire length, with various programs such as fresh water swimming pools or beverage and food bars deployed on floating platforms attached to the ends of the piers.  

Diagram showing the changing Boston shoreline and movable Channel bridges.

Our proposal acknowledges the incredible importance of Boston's seafaring past by alluding to both the piers that bristled from the city's shores, and to the unique bridges that opened and closed as cargo vessels shipped with the tides. The Fort Point Channel bridges are a national engineering treasure, represent an incredibly diverse and imaginative negotiation of conveyances on land and water, the mechanisms of turning gears, wheels, and counterweights echoing the Newtonian clockwork of the solar system, the diurnal rotations of the earth and moon that gives us the cycles of the tides, syncopated with day and night, work and play. The piers extend out into the water as a celebration of voyage and crossing, the reach of imagination, a freight of ideas, and the possibility of reconciling technological aspirations with an experience of the natural environment. 

Deployment of 1"=1'-0" prototype in the Charles River.

Special thanks to Beth Baniszewski, Michael Kyes, David Porter, David Rubino, and James Vayo.