Project by Héloïse de Walque
Riverbank State Park in West Harlem, adjacent to the West Side Highway, contains a community garden and greenhouse that appear natural and organic, yet are highly structured and artificial, reflecting New York City’s controlled landscapes. Plant clippings were collected and catalogued into an index, with species names and locations identified in plan to reveal this imposed order. The plan speculates whether plant species native to New York City, with strong natural growth tendencies, could extend beyond their designated planters and grow more freely. Through modelling, the site’s greenhouse and planters are reinterpreted and rescaled to test this possibility. The model becomes a planter with a drainage plate and vertical trellises that allow its plant to climb along the greenhouse trusses. Sectional studies examine the separation between contaminated urban soil and imported planter soil, as well as the influence of highway pollution and underground wastewater management infrastructure.
