Neoteric Ecologies
Site: Manhattan, NY
For hundreds of years the oyster was a major food source for Manhattan and its inhabitants. The oyster was so abundant and nutritious that all socioeconomic classes incorporated it into their diets. It remained this way until the 1920s, when the pollution in the
East River Estuary reached its peak. This decimated the oyster population and forced thousands of oyster farms around Manhattan to permanently close. This project is a reintroduction of the oyster back into New York City; not in a pre-industrial romantic way, but
via the creation of a new ecology. This new ecology will combine the city and the river, the natural and the artificial, the people and the oysters.
East River Park is a perfect site for this intervention as it exists in a weird in-between state. It is not of the city, and it is not of the river. There is a hard line of separation created by the FDR Freeway, and there is a hard line of separation created between the edge of the
park and the river. The X Pier will feather these edges and help coalesce two seemingly different ecologies.
Site: Manhattan, NY
For hundreds of years the oyster was a major food source for Manhattan and its inhabitants. The oyster was so abundant and nutritious that all socioeconomic classes incorporated it into their diets. It remained this way until the 1920s, when the pollution in the
East River Estuary reached its peak. This decimated the oyster population and forced thousands of oyster farms around Manhattan to permanently close. This project is a reintroduction of the oyster back into New York City; not in a pre-industrial romantic way, but
via the creation of a new ecology. This new ecology will combine the city and the river, the natural and the artificial, the people and the oysters.
East River Park is a perfect site for this intervention as it exists in a weird in-between state. It is not of the city, and it is not of the river. There is a hard line of separation created by the FDR Freeway, and there is a hard line of separation created between the edge of the
park and the river. The X Pier will feather these edges and help coalesce two seemingly different ecologies.
The pier consists of several programmatic typologies:the oyster farm, the fish farm, the wetland, and the
market space. Since the East River water is currently polluted by lead and mercury, the pier houses a natural plant filtration system. A reintroduction of the past wetland ecology of 1609. The river water is pumped up and filters down through a series of plant filtration
rings that surround each wetland pool. The depth and the width of each ring was determined by a careful study into the technical requirements of wetland water filtration. These plants will eliminate the mercury and lead from the water. Once the water has been cleaned,
it will be distributed to the oyster and fish pools; creating a self-sustaining environment. These natural programs are raised up above the site in the form of large MegaTubs. Visitors can walk around the natural landscape and inhabit some spaces of the concentric
ring filtration system. The rings are the area where man and nature coexist.