Symbiotic Urbanism
The idea of symbiotic relationships between the built environment and ecosystem goes beyond the notion of sustainability. We want to explore the ideas beyond the proposals of a few wind turbines or solar harvesting methods. We are interested in investigating solutions that are mutually beneficial to the built environment, local community, economy, and ecosystem we are inseparable from. We believe in the possibility that human society can thrive from the coexistence of multiple systems. Through Symbiopia and subsequent projects such as Reimagining Rockaway and Manufacturing Gowanus, the pursuit of Symbiotic Urbanism, which creates the synergetic urban infrastructure that merges the interests of communities, the environment, and the public realm, evolved and continues to guide our practice. We are continuously exploring its possibilities and applications through design proposals, research projects, and multidisciplinary collaborations.
Reimaging Rockaway
What if we had an eraser to remove the monolithic housing development along the coast of Rockaway? What if we could redistribute the population to increase the density at the center of the peninsula and decrease it at the periphery that is subject to ever more frequent flooding? What if we allowed water to flow into the community, instead of building a barrier to block the rising tides? We could create a public wetland, that accepts the influx of water and could be used for both recreation and education. The wetlands could then be carried into the housing areas and act as communal green spaces.
Building on the ideas generated by Symbiopia, the project proposes the incremental development of Rockaway where small individual interventions multiply to have a powerful cumulative effect. Starting with infilling the existing housing stock, located in the center of the peninsula, and culminating in the redevelopment of existing singular use low-rise structures into mixed-use buildings, that support residential and commercial uses alongside energy harvesting, fresh food production, and waste treatment in self-sustaining structures, Rockaway could become a model for new urban development in this era of climate change.
Manufacturing Gowanus
Symbiopia: The Start of Symbiotic Relationship
The award-winning project, Symbiopia, an imagined symbiotic waterfront community that combines a vertical hydroponic farming facility with a multifaceted urban landscape, that is interwoven between a web of existing infrastructure, to connect a low-income community to its waterfront. The project was the first to successfully address our interests in complex urban design issues such as equitable access to fresh food, sustainable economic development, waste management, and infrastructure in a design that fostered symbiotic relationships between the community, environment, and local economy.
Symbiopia is a prototype for urban environments where food can be locally grown year-round in controlled symbiotic environments and distributed through existing networks of farmer’s markets, grocery stores, and community-supported agricultural pick-up areas. This project will use the proposed site of the Marine Transfer Station as an example of how this prototype can help to connect people to healthy, sustainably and locally grown food, and also act as a harbinger of jobs and public community resources.
Urban Scale
The financial and environmental impacts of growing and distributing large amounts of pesticide-induced agriculture from rural to urban areas need to be questioned. Hydroponic farming techniques enable us to grow food in temperature-controlled environments year-round without the need for large tracts of land or pesticides. By putting hydroponic farms within vertical structures in urban environments the potential exists to produce significant amounts of food year-round, close to its consumers, and without the need for the amount of land and chemicals that come along with traditional farming methods.
These vertical farms should be located close to regional transportation networks so that food could potentially also be distributed to surrounding cities. A connection to these networks would help to increase the economic feasibility of the farms and also lead to increased job creation.
For New York City, waterfront locations are ideal. This project proposes a series of vertical farming facilities along the waterfront of Manhattan. These facilities would produce food and distribute it through the community’s farmer’s markets, supermarkets, and community-supported agriculture pick-up areas. The proposed waterfront locations not only connect the facilities to regional transportation networks but would also encourage the community’s connection to the waterfront by providing clear paths to the waterfront developed with programmatic elements geared towards the local neighborhood. The facilities themselves would also incorporate community-oriented public resources such as community kitchens, culinary libraries, and restaurants, and transportation infrastructure such as ferry terminals or water taxi access.
Community Scale
The proposal focuses on the site of the Marine Transfer Station site at West 135th St. as a prototype for how such a facility could connect the local community to healthy foods and to its waterfront. Located at the end of a major thoroughfare these vertical farms will act as beacons that attract visitors to the site. The path to the waterfront anticipates programmatic elements such as athletic facilities, a visitor’s center and a supermarket. The path itself will act as a public space that encourages community interaction with programmatic elements such as a swimming pool and daily farmer’s markets. At the end of the path would be the headquarters of Nourishing NYC and also a transit hub.
Symbiotic Networks
The design envisages these facilities to be symbiotic with the environment but also with the local community. The vertical structures are designed to be self-sustaining. The structures would contain both vertical gardens and other uses such as office, residential, or hotel space. The structures would be oriented with the growing areas located to the southwest. The north side of the building would house the additional program. Gray water from this other program would be collected and treated using plants that would take in the water and then transpire releasing cleaner water. The cleaner water is collected and used for the hydroponic gardens. Once the treating plants reach their life cycle they will be composted. The compost will then be used as an energy source that would provide energy for the vertical structure.
This facility will give back to the community by providing healthy and sustainably grown food, public resources, and jobs that are created to support the facility. This project attempts to demonstrate the immense potential this type of facility would have for bringing nutritious food to dense urban environments around the world.
The project traces the historical location of industries along the Gowanus Canal, and the pollutants they left behind, and proposes a return to a type of manufacturing that instead of contaminating the land develops solutions for its remediation. The industries and their residual pollutants were mapped to understand the types of pollutants that exist along the canal and where they are most concentrated. Bioremediation processes can be used that not only remediate the land but also reprocess the pollutants in the production of new products. Doing this cleans the contamination left behind by years of industrial uses while simultaneously positioning the neighbourhood at the forefront of research and development of new manufacturing techniques and products.
The majority of the pollutants can be grouped into the categories of chemicals, organic compounds, fuels, metals and oils. The bioremediation process of phytoremediation, phytoextraction and mycoremedation can be employed to clean the land of these contaminants and also yield new byproducts of the remediation process such as biofuels, landscaping soil and metal recovery.
The project proposes that these remediation and recovery processes could occur on any piece of contaminated land along the canal as the land becomes available. A continuous walkway with informative display and presentation areas would connect at least one example of each remediation and recovery process so as to educate the public about each of their potentials.
Post-industrial sites in urban areas have the potential to become productive landscapes that remediate the pollution found on the sites through the development, manufacturing and use of new bioremediation technologies rather than following the trend of capping or relocating the contamination in order to facilitate the conversion of these areas into gentrified service-oriented neighbourhoods. This project proposes a return to the industrial history of Gowanus by providing a new and innovative industry that remediates the land, educates the public and provides the new opportunities for economic and research development.
