Nowadays

Located In Ridgewood Queens, Nowadays is an outdoor beer garden founded by Brooklyn DJ Mister Saturday Night. Future Green Studio designed the garden to accommodate hundreds of adult and kid partygoers on Sunday afternoons, with a dance floor, DJ booth, picnic tables, and food vendors. Inspired by the existing post-industrial site and its weedy landscape, the whimsical space was developed to include multiple hang out spaces with informal seating on grassy mounds, timber benches, and wood platforms integrated with trees. The flexible design gave the permanent space a pop-up feel, making it easy to transform for various events.

Selected for their phytoremediating capability, a grid of honey locust trees absorbs heavy metals from the soil over time and offers filtered shade on hot summer days. Sumac, grey birch, and quaking aspen trees populate the grassy mounds and perimeter of the site, referencing a successional landscape that typically emerges in disturbed areas. Tree of Heaven and Mulberry were left to contribute to the ecology and weedy aesthetic of the site. A great opportunity to embrace spontaneous urban plants. The intent was to enhance the site and not have it be overly curated.