The Albany Bulb is a former landfill and a park. It is near my house, and over the past several years I have gone there many times, largely because it is a compelling, gorgeous, and troublesome landscape, and a charming place for a walk with a dog or a friend.
One of the more interesting conundrums that landscape architecture is forced to reckon with is the simple fact that quite often, non-designed landscapes are often more beautiful and functional their constructed brethren. The Albany Bulb is a stalwart example of this phenomenon. It functions as a park, a landfill, a home for the homeless, a wetland, and as a place where plants, both native and non, spar and thrive happily.
The Bulb is as close to an anarchist landscape as I have every come. It is self-policed, non-maintained, self-perpetuating, and visually and ecologically post-apocalyptic. It is a hyphen.
It is a landscape that tests what you expect of a park and questions the essence of both beauty and recreation. By bringing together elements that are normally not, it challenges you, psychologically, but also physically, because there are about a million ways you could injure yourself here.
When the tide is low enough, you can just barely navigate across a mostly submerged jetty of rocks. HOW FUN!
Burner art, flowering meadows, rebar, riprap, the roar of the ocean, and a whipping coastal breeze. Bring your bong.
