Above Image: thread collective principals Gita Nandan, Elliott Maltby and Mark Mancuso. Photography: courtesy of thread collective and NYC Housing Authority
As we move into February, perhaps the bleakest of all months, many of us are already beginning to fall off the wagons of new year’s resolutions we pinned ourselves to so religiously on January 1st. We might be battling winter blues, but that doesn’t mean we can’t daydream about ideal worlds of interior design and architecture.
In 2016, an ideal world in architecture and design points to all things resilient – buildings and their interiors, public spaces, coastlines, transportation modes, and many other forms of urban planning.
With more mega-storms and hurricanes forecast for coming years, and increasingly alarming reports from the scientific community warning about climate change, it’s now more important than ever that architecture and design communities infuse their work with resilient, sustainable elements that can help protect the future of our living environments.
thread collective, a Brooklyn-based architecture and design firm, has woven a commitment to building a low carbon, resilient and sustainable world into the heart of its design process.
Many states are modernizing their electrical grinds, and some business and neighborhood groups are investing in local power sources, which often use renewables as their basis. New community-based microgrids in vulnerable areas often use solar power, providing clean, renewable power to their communities. thread collective pursues projects sensitive to resiliency, and it’s helping lead a high-profile effort to make more microgrids a reality on the East Coast.
Led by architect and community organizer Gita Nandan, R.A., thread collective is part of a team developing innovative local energy networks independent of the larger utility companies. During extreme weather events, blackouts and other emergencies, the microgrids power individual customers and crucial public services. The firm was selected for RISE:NYC, a program for creating small-scale, innovative “Resilient Power Hubs” (micro-grid power plants) in three New York City locations.
thread collective also landed a state-sponsored feasibility study for building-based systems to benefit the Red Hook community in Brooklyn, NY, whose reconstruction plan Nandan co-chairs. The new Red Hook Community Microgrid aims to improve “power resiliency” for critical facilities and operations to sustain the waterfront community on a day-to-day basis as well as in future emergency events.
The microgrids are thread collective’s first foray into energy independent systems. One might ask how an architect or designer’s work fits into these projects. Energy and power resiliency is its own animal – a specialized area of work that requires extensive knowledge of the science behind energy systems.
Anyone can plop some solar panels down on the ground or onto a rooftop, but that will do nothing to help change the mindset that solar systems are unattractive. It can be difficult to find an appropriate design for a solar system that feels like a natural extension of the building itself, and that is where an architect or designer enters the picture.
“We want to shift the perspective away from viewing energy efficiency solutions as detracting from the aesthetics of a building,” said Ms. Nandan. “There are innovative ways we can build integrated solar systems that fit in with the building’s architecture.”
In one of its projects, thread collective devised a way to take out a building’s existing skylights, redesign them to accommodate solar panels, and then refit them back into the building. In another project, the firm fitted a solar panel system to act as a shade canopy on a building site, rather than simply using a traditional shade canopy that would serve only one purpose.
Urban resiliency has many faces, and energy in the form of nourishment is a growing concern as well. As more humans gravitate toward urban areas, food deserts – geographic areas where affordable and nutritious food is hard to obtain, often found in impoverished areas – must be addressed.
In the realm of urban agriculture (“urban ag”), thread collective’s landscape architect Elliott Maltby and Ms. Nandan also designed one of the first models of a working farm on public housing property. The Red Hook West Urban Farm, developed by the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) and a local nonprofit called Added Value, is a one-acre working farm in Red Hook, Brooklyn, that donates produce to families in need as well as selling it at farmers markets. The new outdoor space will serve as a prototype to be replicated on at least five other sites, as part of the NYCHA’s Urban Agriculture Initiative.
As with many public projects, the farm serves multiple purposes within its community; a food source is not the farm’s sole mission. The Red Hook West Urban Farm is a built representation of thread collective’s work in urban agriculture, green infrastructure and resiliency, and serves as a site of education, job training and community engagement. In this way, it is the opposite of the urban food desert, and a source of both knowledge and economic vitality.
The Red Hook West Urban Farm is indeed a working farm – not a community garden, and that distinction is important. Ownership and scale are two Community gardens often spread ownership and responsibility among several people or groups, but farms are almost always managed by a singe individual or group. For example, the Red Hook West Urban Farm is maintained and operated by Green City Force’s Clean Energy Corp, an AmeriCorps program based in NYC. And while community gardens typically feature planter sections in the 4×8-foot range, farm planter sizes are much larger, in the 50×80-foot range.
One key design element that sets the Red Hood West Urban Farm apart from other “urban ag” spaces is its open, inviting blueprint. thread collective’s landscape design overlays existing, informal pedestrian paths over the east-west orientation; the concept is an optimal one for growing fruits and vegetables, and yields a dynamic pattern of planters and gathering spaces.
“Most farms are usually protected with a fence of some sort, but our design encourages people to walk through it,” said Ms. Maltby.
thread collective’s future projects are brimming with urban ag and energy efficiency components.
For example, its work on Lowlands, a vision for the public spaces of NYCHA housing developments, involves recommending varied “green infrastructure strategies” to boost community engagement and ecological resiliency. Through its involvement in the Lowlands project, thread collective hopes to make urban housing safer and healthier, while also strengthening existing corridors and linking together residential, commercial and retail sites.
Ms. Nandan also noted the firm’s future involvement in a project that will build an urban ag element into an office interior.
“Offices with an urban ag component will become more popular in the future,” said Ms. Nandan. “How people are inhabiting offices and other spaces is evolving, and people are becoming more comfortable with things like small kitchen gardens and other urban ag ideas.”
The firm’s mission statement on its website reads, “We see our role not just as architects but as visionaries and leaders to help transform design, and collective thinking to create buildings and environments that will support a more just, creative, and resilient future…the decision making process is one of the most challenging aspects of resilient and sustainable design. thread collective’s skills as educators bring a deep understanding of how to situate problems, clarify issues and broaden discussion through design, informing our clients to help them understand and select the best solutions.”
What’s happening in Red Hook is of course only one example of new micro-grid installment and urban farm planning initiatives springing up around the country; it is hopefully just a small slice of what’s to come in the next few years.