HARLEM'S TABLE
Team Design: WIndy Gay + Patrick Sinnott
This project seeks to release the ritual of food from its current condition of mass-processing, monoculture
and extensive packaging and shipping. By focusing on the ritual of food the project contradicts the site’s past as an iconic place of waste and consumption. The ritual of food goes beyond providing fresh produce to local residence. It re-engages the neighborhood with seven iterations of the basic, yet profound relationship to physical and cultural sustenance. This includes preparation (soil and seeds), cultivation, harvest, the craft of preserving and preparing a meal and, most importantly, the time of sharing - set around a community table. The central feature of this design is the Harlem Table. All other ritual activities occurring on the site return to the table. Set within a grand hall, the table is the site’s pulse. On any given day you may find the culinary school teaching children how to can green beans, at the other end of the room you may find volunteers starting seeds for the spring planting season or cleaning tools, and you may also find local residents sharing a meal prepared from one of the recipes found in the recipe library. Other components of the ritual manifest in the form of agricultural piers, a recipe bank with walls of community-told food narratives, a green house conservatory, and a restored salt marsh wetland. Each are connected through a series of pedestrian catwalks, projecting urbanites into the reeds, water and sky. All parts of the ritual occur locally on site, while also reaching back into the community in the form of recycled wooden crates retrofitted for easy distribution. These crates might contain soil, plants, or even tools from the tool leaning library or canning supplies from the presevation stock. The DIY quality of the space remains urban and grassroots. The space is meant to engender innovation and community agency
Outreach to existing community networks comes in multiple forms. Including, providing programs as well as through distribution. Crates are attached to mobile carts and can be attached to bikes, delivered by van or picked up by foot or car. distribution is centralized at the intersection of West 135th street and the shore, as well as utilizing the recently decomissioned 12th street east of the site.
NORTH VIEW OF SITE // views from Riverside Park reveal the palette structure, green roof/ organization space, and the building form, generated through the action of cutting, slidding, and removing
DISTRIBUTION PIER // crates in modules sizes of 2.0’ x 2.0’ are used to distribute ritual into and from the community in the form of tool lending, books, garden boxes, soil and compost, and canning supplies.
200’ LONG FLEXIBLE USE TABLE runs the length of a glass room inserted through the center of the existing framework of the building. serves as the pulse and focus of the ritual of food.
WETLAND PEDESTRIAN CATWALKS // 5.0’ mesh catwalks jutt into salt marsh wetland, creating low impact access to native wetland ecology. mesh allows for air, water, and light to penetrate.
