Cooking Islands - Planning New Bedford's Polluted Waters

Cooking Islands is a landscape-based, resilient system integrating ecological, economic, and social elements to revitalize and repurpose polluted and underutilized coastal areas in New Bedford, MA. It focuses on creating productive, sustainable spaces that foster circular economies and novel ecologies. The project revitalizes two key anthropogenic grounds: a post-desanding facility and a coastal bay near Clarks Cove. These sites are interconnected by shared concerns such as resource and contaminant flow and migratory patterns of organisms, forming a system for exchange, cycled ecologies, and material economy.

The Spices Garden repurposes polluted grounds into functional landscapes. Situated in the former desanding water facility, it serves as a model of productivity rooted in sustainable landscape use. Here, productivity is expressed through active engagement with the land, with visitors and staff collecting and sorting materials, tending to plants, and preparing resources for subsequent use in Cooking Islands.

Cooking Islands, are dynamic spaces for ecological and economic synthesis. These aquaculture landscapes feature floating and inland coastal marshlands, shell gardens for shellfish and kelp farming. Material from the Spices Garden aids in coastline extension, contributing to a circular system of organic and inorganic labor that circulates nutrients, materials, and capital. The design is highly responsive, adapting to sea-level rise, sedimentation, currents, and labor patterns, aiming to withstand and recover from extreme climatic events, including hurricanes. Together, the islands function as a system of resilient and adaptive infrastructure.

As an incubator for shellfish and kelp farming, Cooking Islands’ aquaculture units can be relocated to remediate other coastal sites once mature. The islands offer public and experiential spaces where visitors engage with the productive landscape firsthand, harvesting oysters and experiencing the fruits of their labor in a communal space.

The project designs a closed-loop system that circulates nutrients, materials, and capital between different landscape elements. Cooking Islands thus creates a multifunctional landscape that combines ecological remediation, sustainable resource production, community engagement, and economic resilience, offering a template for coastal adaptation to environmental and economic shifts.