Brooklyn Bridge Park:
The Discovery Station
The Nancy Bowe Discovery Station in the Brooklyn Bridge Park Environmental Education Center is the centerpiece of this interactive community space, opened in the fall of 2015. The Discovery Station serves two key functions as part of the new visitor center.
First, it works as an engaging guide to the new park landscape, an award winning design by renowned landscape architects MVVA. Next, like the design of the park itself, the Discovery Station illustrates aspects of ecology that are at work within this unique piece of dynamic urban nature.
Nim (working within Human Nature Projects) developed all aspects of the content, based on her years of interpretive program development with the park. After familiarizing themselves with the topics--birds, salt marsh restoration, bridge engineering--visitors can explore these topics just outside the building.
Topics throughout the exhibition are designed to be accessible on multiple levels; visitors across a wide age range can use the stations together.
Press
The Brooklyn Eagle covers the opening of the Environmental Education Center, home to the Discovery Station exhibition and other work by Nim Lee.
The Exhibition opening on Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy website
Drawing by Human Nature Projects
The two bridges that book end the BBP were historic firsts.
Original artwork by Phillip Pond of Human Nature Projects
The largely native landscaping at the park attracted endemic insect species. Illustrations by Nim Lee
The park environment attracts winged wildlife and they people that watch and photograph them, including the amateur photographer and birder, Heather Wolf, whose images are featured in this interactive.
Each drawer describes an element of the park but can also be used as a stand alone lesson.
Making a fish rubbing helps visitors learn a few of the hundreds of fish that call the East River home
Working with the Brooklyn Historical Society, visitors see the evolution of the park from working waterfront to natural respite.
The East River, which runs on the seaward side of the Park, is subject to tidal fluctuations. In this intertidal zone, different plants and animals find homes, which visitors are invited to discover.