SLO Architecture

Harvest Dome

Bronx & Manhattan, New York

2011

Any New Yorker worth their salt will recognize the frayed remains of broken umbrellas, which crowd city trashcans and litter gutters during and after a storm. With Harvest Dome, Amanda Schachter and Alexander Levi of SLO Architecture have repurposed these remains as a way to foreground the city’s accumulation of waterborne debris. Schachter and Levi worked with area teenagers and apprentice architects to gather the discarded, storm-snapped umbrellas and assemble them into a light-gauge spherical installation, which they floated in the Inwood Hill Park Inlet at Manhattan’s northernmost tip. Rising and falling with the tide, the buoyant dome called attention to the city’s waterways and watersheds and the circadian action of the water.

Accessibility, Community, Information, Sustainability
5,000 from 2011 Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Grant
4 months
7 main team + about 10 volunteers and community
Problem - unsightly polluted urban waterways
Solution - floating sculpture made from waterborne debris