Mar·gi·na·lia. Marginality and redemption in New York City, alternative landscapes for Rikers Island

Rikers Islands stands as a critical site to investigate scenarios of climate change mitigation, energy transition, community centered models of land regeneration and, eventually, experimenting new forms of justice.

The long-awaited closure of the prisons opens to possible new post-incarceration alternative futures: non-speculative landscape-based models of regeneration in the city of New York.

The invisibility of the island has long hidden the system of feedback loops that were tightening together Rikers Island with the city, making it a technical/operational land deeply linked with its urbanized context.

Only apparently a margin, it can be seen as a Marginalia: residual space of new possibilities.

Students are asked to develop a projective cartography of New York City. They will depict the complexity of spatial and nonspatial implications of selected investigation topics, on Rikers Island.

Reciprocal landscape-based design scenarios will be developed: firstly the island itself, and, a second site, at students’ discretion, able to articulate a dialectical reflection on New York and, eventually, on urbanization.