This project envisions growth of people and plants as the cornerstone of urban regeneration, centering children as active agents in shaping their environments. It reclaims a dead-end street and underutilized lots to transform them into networks of play, collaboration, and self-guided exploration. The design prioritizes shared spaces that foster collective care and intergenerational connection, reviving the ethos of “raising a child through the village”. This collaboration is cultivated through terraces, porches, and gardens, creating environments where children can safely be, create, learn, play, and grow.

Rooted in Harlem’s sociocultural realities, the project presents strategies to address food insecurity and food apartheid through the integration of formal (greenhouse) and informal gardens (terraces, communal spaces). The on-site food production focuses on culturally significant crops which are harder to obtain in Harlem.

Additionally, through deliberate interventions, the project envisions a process of soil regeneration, where contamination is not erased but metabolized into renewal. Debris and remediated soil are transformed into the bricks forming the building’s envelope; therefore embedding the architecture with the memory of the site. More than housing, this project constructs a framework of collective growth.