Harbor Memory: Reclaiming the Shoreline

A decommissioned waste station becomes a layered civic landmark—transforming a site of industrial infrastructure into a vertical museum, gathering space, and water transit hub. Set along the working waterfront of New York City, the project integrates cultural memory with adaptive reuse, offering a new model for how architecture can repair both land and legacy.

What does it mean to reclaim a shoreline—not only physically, but symbolically? The design honors the overlooked contributions of African and Hispanic Americans to U.S. maritime history. At its core, a multi-story atrium threads light and circulation through the building, while exterior terraces create tiered gardens that rise like waves—blurring the line between structure and landscape.

The rainscreen façade becomes a quiet monument: a super-graphic abstraction drawn from the geometric diagrams of the Middle Passage. Inside, suspended light tubes cascade through the atrium, evoking the idea of spirits rising—carrying a sense of optimism, dignity, and ascension. Light and water become navigational tools, guiding visitors through a space shaped by memory, movement, and renewal.

Harbor Memory is not just an act of reuse—it is a reclamation. A place where architecture reimagines loss as legacy, and infrastructure becomes a vessel for story, reflection, and civic rebirth.