Graduate Architecture student Daniel Mowery was awarded the Student Prize in the international design competition, The Harlem Edge/Cultivating Connections. 

Administered by the Emerging New York Architects (ENYA) Committee of the AIA NY Chapter, the program challenged participants to explore the redevelopment of the decommissioned Department of Sanitation marine transfer station located in the Hudson River at 135th Street.

Mowery’s design, “Stairway to Harlem,” proposes a new typology for both the city and the role of the transfer station. The Stairway to Harlem proposes a unification of the city fabric and its trade route through an expanded experience and through the mission of Nourishing NYC, an outreach for nutritional health.

Rather than a transfer station of waste, the new station becomes a series of productive landscapes through community gardens, vertical greenhouses, educational & cultural programs, markets, and its sustainable shipping port. The new territory of Nourishing NYC becomes an innovative and energetic place for the growth, education, and dispersal of healthy foods. The once isolated waste transfer station is transformed into a productive educational campus that reconnects the citizens of New York City back to the river through its expansion of the park system and as an active, sustainable, and educational shipping port.

The competition’s winning entries will be exhibited at the Center for Architecture in New York this July and be published in a competition catalog. In coordination with the exhibition, ENYA will be hosting a symposium to discuss design issues related to the winning entries and possibilities for the future development of the site and its neighboring community.

More information about this year’s program and awards can be found on the ENYA website.