Project by Eric Ha
Pier Kitchen reconsider thermal comfort as a continuous gradient shaped by environmental variation. Located on the Christopher Street Pier, the project consists of five chambers: cooking, two greenhouses, drying, and fishing, into a sequential system that responds to heat, humidity, and ventilation. The warmest chamber, which is a cooking unit, contains a rammed earth stove created from excavated ground whose rising heat and steam are captured by a fog catcher (polysombra mesh) and filtered through an oil vent, treating cooking as both a thermal and spatial operation. Near greenhouses form a mild zone, using varied enclosures to mitigate cold air and river winds, while supporting indigenous three sister farming system. Cooler chambers accommodate drying and fishing units, where fog and rain are collected, filtered, and reused for irrigation. Together, these zones construct a spatial narrative in which climatic variation becomes an active design strategies rather than a condition to be stabilized.
