Research + Design Advanced Studio
URBAN GARDEN PORTAL
This project focuses on the comparison between architectural space and the community garden. The inner zone functions as a community garden serving both the public and residents, while the residential blocks are positioned along the northern street frontage, relinquishing southern sunlight to the interior garden. The community garden is vertically stacked with a semi-underground exhibition space below, aligning the garden’s elevation with the adjacent park level. Ramps connect these two layers to each other and further integrate them into the surrounding street network.
Along the street facade, a greenhouse is introduced to support self-sufficient production for farmworkers. By opening up the previously solid facade, the greenhouse not only activates the street interface but also subtly reveals the presence of the interior green garden beyond.
What is
Community
arden?
Historians trace the first community garden back to the city’s Almshouse in the 1730s. The “inmates” (as they were called) worked in communal gardens, both for therapeutic reasons and to offset the cost of their maintenance in the institution. Nineteenth and early twentieth-century gardens were generally informal arrangements. For the Record’s article on Victory Garden described the World War II-era plots that sprang-up around the city.
The Municipal Library’s articles, brochures, press releases and ephemera in the vertical file on “NYC Gardens” picks up the story in the 1960s and 70s when arson and disinvestment in housing stock led to the proliferation of vacant lots. The lots attracted rats, became dumping grounds for garbage and venues for illegal activities. As a way of improving their blighted neighborhoods, community groups began advocating for permission to build gardens in the lots.
Private
Shared
Public
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1 Adam Sheet - Light 2 White Plaster - Facade 3 EPS - Insulation 4 Steel Keel - Separation 5 Concrete - Structure 6 Steel - Structure for Green House 7 Low Iron Tempered Glass - Green House
