IWM_NYC: The Garbage Studio so_
This design studio brought new ideas and a fresh approach to New York’s garbage crisis, focusing on the South Bronx.
The Waste Studio: Re-engineering the South Bronx Waterfront
This design studio will address the potential of integrated waste management principles alongside issues of waterfront revitalization and community connections within the South Bronx, an industrial area in transition. The studio will explore strategies for the transformation of key sites along the waterfront, and will research waste reduction methods, advanced collection systems, and the design of materials recovery/recycling/
sorting stations and/or Waste to Energy facilities in conjunction with infrastructural and landscape-based site strategies for these programs in the Bronx and potentially at upstate New York sites. By considering waste management strategies within an environmental justice, architectural, urban, and landscape design framework, this design studio hopes to bring new ideas and a fresh approach to New York’s garbage crisis.
New York City currently exports approximately 55% of the 27,000 tons of household waste generated per day by the City beyond State borders, mostly to landfills. With the closing of the Fresh Kills Landfill, New York needs to devise long term, integrated and innovative solutions to managing its garbage that go beyond “out of sight, out of mind” and address the real and complex issues of public health and community concerns while considering the realities of waste generation and disposal.
Site: Our site is home to an active residential community, the new Fulton Fish Market, and the Cooperative Distribution Market, brownfields, railyards, and future parks. The community is looking to redefine its relationship to the waterfront and to make connections to surrounding linear park systems: for example, the proposed “South Bronx Greenway” is in development and will connect the Bronx River and Randall’s Island.
In addition to redefining the waterfront and public river access, a new Waste to Energy Facility or related edge development could have a positive impact on the interior of the community, freeing up more than 15 existing waste transfer stations located within the site area for new programs and reducing related truck traffic. This is significant as the neighborhood has among the highest asthma rates in the city.
Program: We will explore strategies for the design of IWM related programs and their physical integration with our site: the M-3 zoned waterfront parcels along the South Bronx waterfront. The studio will investigate waste reduction methods, advanced collection systems, and the design of materials recovery/recycling/sorting stations and/or Waste to Energy facilities, in parallel with community aspirations and infrastructural
and landscape-based site strategies for these programs in Hunts Point. We will also explore the public health and environmental impacts of these IWM systems and synthesize cost/benefit to the public with attention to the ‘wasteshed’ of the Bronx Borough.
Studio Process: The initial weeks of the studio will focus on research and analysis of the site and into IWM processes. Students will work in teams to research an aspect of IWM, and then develop a site strategy for a waterfront facility or facilities that, together with a public interface component and reconsideration of community access, addresses issues of ecology, transport, connection, and permeability. Students will then work individually or in groups to develop an aspect of a scheme with attention to the programmatic and
physical integration of these systems into the surrounding urban landscape and community. Each student will be asked to explore a dimension of public-ness, whether in drop-off/recycling interface, the visualization of processes, or through related programs such as ferry terminals, parks, riverfront connections etc.
Interdisciplinary Collaboration: Engineering faculty and students from the Fu School of Engineering and Applied Sciences will join the architecture studio as an important resource for our work. This collaboration will be facilitated by a formal weekly studio seminar (Wed afternoon) as well as informal exchange around project areas. Professor Nicholas Themelis and Karsten Millrath of the SEAS faculty will act as additional
critics within this framework.
Issues: strategic siting of facilities based on infrastructural, landscape and economic strategies, architecture/landscape form, waterfront revitalization, brownfield remediation, air quality and filtration, waste reduction methods, collection systems, processes of increasing materials and energy recovery from solid wastes, green building technology, integration of Waste Management and Eco-park facilities within urban landscape and community.
