BROOKLYN PLASTIC HYBRID

The proposed urban model consists of a civic initiative that integrates public space with an environmental consciousness through plastic recycling. The street functions as a framed open and public space that extends towards the interior of the buildings, densifying public activity and creating a new type of collaboration between the public and private programs of the building. As a response to the ecological crisis, lack of urban life and civic engagement within the site, the project transforms the traditional street into a public plaza, activating urban life for the community and an attraction for visitors. 

The basement space for some of the buildings is reprogrammed as a public workshop which is used for a plastic recycling process within the block. Nowadays New York has encountered with such a serious problem as massive plastic pollution. Despite sorting the separate sorting of garbage only 17% of all generated plastic is recycled. Plastic lasts for a thousands of years, so instead of damaging our planet we want to show people how to use this material in order to benefit from it. The aim of our project is to empower people to build strong local networks of people tackling the plastic solution by turning plastic waste into valuable materials and inspire more people to take action. Our goal is to enable people to work with plastic, so we propose to install in some of the building basements semi-industrial type of machines that could be easily build. They don’t require industrial scale investments and will allow people to turn their recycle passion into a profitable business.

The integrated plastic recycling system consists of a small-scale industrial process which opens the opportunity of community engagement in which both locals and visitors can place their used plastic and transform it. The scale of the objects ranges from plastic filament to molded objects such as tiles. The basements are becoming a kind of social laboratory connecting the public/commercial space of the street with the private space of the apartments. In the basements small scale pier-to-pier manufacturing brings agency directly to the residents, recycles, and refurbishes the street in unique and individualistic ways. But other kinds of "laboratories" are to be imagined and deployed based on need and desire. The street is made up of a tile pattern combined through different iterations along the ground surface, and in some cases, it is extruded in multiple heights creating a dynamic and playful urban scenario. The integration of street, facade, and building evolve into social practices that densify urban life within the block. The proposal brings new forms of civic interaction and community participation throughout the multiple stages of the system’s ecology while creating an active and sustainable environment.