Food & Shelter
Many of New York's start-up urban farms produce locally-grown fresh food
in small neglected parks and vacant lots, the leftover spaces of the city.
This proposal looks to replenish the industrial brownfield site by combining
a continued light manufacturing component, affordable housing, and - most
significantly - new fields for urban farms.
At the neighborhood scale, 'Food and Shelter' stacks program often found
in separate zoning areas. At the site's southern edge, a street wall defines
and continues the local city grid. The terraced landscape of farm plots
and low-rise housing steps up the site toward the waterfront, culminating
in a series of mid-rise towers with views to Manhattan and back to Queens.
Organized in 'pinched' blocks, view corridors are maximized, while a continuous
boardwalk along the water’s edge connects the site to itself and to the
larger Astoria neighborhood.
Unlike tower-in-the-park schemes, this strategy allows for descending scales
of public space between the city and the front door. On returning to their
apartments, tenants move along the public street, through semi-public farms,
into their duplex building along semi-private gardens, and only then into
the privacy of their own home.
At the southern elevation, a double skin facade ripples above the fields,
reflecting both crops and sky at once. Behind the facades, oriented 20 degress
west of due south, are deep two story high balconies awash with sunlight.
Warm air is captured in this insulating layer during the winter. In the
summer, cool air flows freely, and harsh light is shaded by foliage from
the balcony gardens. This corridor-balcony becomes a suburban front yard,
stacked up into urbanity in a hybrid block.
Raising the farmland allows for a flexible program beneath, especially within
the street wall: storefront retail, second floor offices, garage parking,
farming storage and supplies; and at the waterfront, a child-care center
and a ferry terminal to link residents, commuters, and customers via an
extension of existing ferry routes.
This proposal begins a network of urban farms and homes along the former
industrial areas of Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx. Lifting the ground
for farming and housing creates a transition space and the opportunity for
a viable neighborhood in otherwise uninhabitable areas. By tucking parking
and warehousing under the open space, the urban landscape becomes positively
oriented toward the community - in this case, a cooperative farm. The layering
of farms and homes among warehouses, parking and industry demonstrates a
specifically urban method of cohabitation that has existed as long as cities
themselves, and counteracts the sterile homogeneity of short-sighted planning
restrictions and the similarly myopic modern urban life.
Healthy food - like housing - becomes less and less available to the city’s
low income residents every year. A growing number of projects across the
city, under the auspices of groups such as Added Value and Just Food, illustrate
that this need not be the case. At a quarter acre garden in Red Hook, Brooklyn,
for instance, neighborhood teenagers grow 40 varieties of produce, conduct
research and provide food to local soup kitchens, respected restaurants,
a farmers' market, and their own families.
Our proposal includes 6 acres of farmland, along with 1 acre of semi-private
gardens, making it one of the largest farms in New York City. Food & Shelter
aims to realize the potential richness of building a piece of New York City
- not just housing, not just a car park, and not just a supermarket. The
roofscape, basement and towers constitute a new typology: a resilient city
block with a sense of responsibility for itself, that recycles the waste
it produces, helps generate the energy it requires, and grows the food it
needs.
Proposed zoning: R6
Lot area: 455,500 s.f. / 10.5 acres
Lot coverage: 294,040 s.f. / 64.6%
Floor area (gross): 1,360,320 s.f.
Floor area (net): 1,222,765 s.f.
Housing floor area (gross): 1,014,625 s.f.
Housing floor area (net): 862,431 s.f.
Housing units (@800 s.f./unit): 1,078 units
Commercial floor area: 192,988 s.f.
Off-street parking floor area (gross): 152,707 s.f.
Off-street parking floor area (net): 122,165 s.f.
Farm area: 178,756 s.f. / 6.1 acres
Semi-private garden area: 40,632 s.f. / .93 acres
Open space area: 266,109 s.f. |
