It is a project fundamentally about urban density. Why have we increasingly come to inhabit the planet in urban formations? What do we gain from living in close proximity to others? Density has advantages in sustainability, access and community. This project particularly focuses on the city’s creative and productive capacity.
My perspective on inhabitation is informed by the French urban sociologist Lefebvre who asked: what does it mean to make a city? He proposed the concept of the right to the city as a right to inhabit, use, and appropriate space. The project is connected to a current movement, documented in Nina Rappaport’s “Hybrid Factory, Hybrid City” which proposes mixed zoning for industry and residence to create more heterogenous, resilient neighborhoods.
In aerial photos of New York from 1924, you can see the active working waterfronts along the East River and Newtown Creek. Today the Newtown Creek has become a back alley for the city, housing scrap metal yards and the wastewater treatment plant. It was once the most heavily trafficked industrial waterway in the country. Various industries grew there, including construction materials, glue (circular economy for horses which supplied and transported the burgeoning metropolis), and, importantly, oil refinery.
The Newtown Creek is the site of the second largest oil spill in US history.
My thesis takes on this site 100 years after this photo was taken. History, its traces in today’s urban fabric, show the connection between working, living, and landscape in Greenpoint. What is the landscape of work today? What is the landscape of work in the future of our cities as projected by current trends in urban development and zoning? While there are a few trial cases for mixing industry and residential as part of the City of Yes program, the vision of work in tomorrow’s city is dominated by services/amenities/retail, in designated zones of leisure, paired with creative/intellectual pursuits, unplugged and mobile. These forms are alienated and alienating. Disconnecting productivity from the land and the elements.
Hemp has potential as a phytoremediator and as a healthy, sustainable building material.