Bushwick, Brooklyn's Oko Farms Brings Aquaponics And A School Of Fish To The People

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Bushwick, Brooklyn's Oko Farms Brings Aquaponics And A School Of Fish To The People

Nigerian-born Yemi Amu shares a look at Oko Farms, a Bushwick, Brooklyn aquaponics system housing both fish and plants with the same water source since 2013. Given that about 70 percent of freshwater is used for agriculture globally, Oko Farms is recycling at its best. Jen Maylack interviews the urban farmer for Vogue US.

When Amu first encountered the concept of aquaponics, she realized this technique, which uses fish waste to fertilize plants grown in water, and then in turn allows the plants to filter toxins from the water so it can safely be returned to fish, had massive potential. It’s a symbiotic system, relying on the relationship between fish, plants and microbes.  “Nature is really efficient, and I fell in love with that efficiency,“ Amu says. “That source of locally raised sustainable protein, nobody is doing it.”

Seeking knowledge about her own eating disorder, the urban farmer began studying Ayurveda and its emphasis on holistic nutrition, supported by the idea that food is medicine. She then attended Teachers College, Columbia University for a Master’s Degree in Health and Nutrition Education. Soon came rooftop gardening and a passion that grabbed her being.

Bette Midler & Michael Kors Open Solar-Powered Essex Street Community Garden In Brooklyn

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Mega talent Bette Midler and designer Michael Kors, joined by his husbandLance LePere, reminded New Yorkers Thursday night that wonderful gifts to humanity can come in small packages. Honoring the summer solstice, the trio joined New York Restoration Project (NYRP) Executive Director Deborah Marton in a ribbon-cutting for the newly restored green space, called the Essex Street Community Garden.

Attending an old-fashioned, New York block party, the global citizens celebrated the 3,200-square-foot green space is the first New York community garden that is entirely solar-powered, featuring Wi-Fi, a projection screen, and greenery that was planted by Kors and other community members themselves. The garden, one of 52 that NYRP installed around the city, will be an intended haven for weddings, yoga classes, movie screenings, and more celebrations to come, bringing together locals into a shared space, writes CR Fashionbook. 

The activist and philanthropy players have worked with NYRP for the last 21 years, after Midler brought Kors and LePere into the organization. 

Gowanus Brooklyn Batcave Set For Herzog & de Meuron Transformation To Support Creative Economy

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Gowanus Brooklyn Batcave Set For Herzog & de Meuron Transformation To Support Creative Economy

The Pritzker Prize-winning Herzog & de Meuron will transform the Gowanus Batcave into a manufacturing center for the arts. Commissioned by the non-profit Powerhouse Environmental Arts Foundation, which acquired the building in 2012 for $7 million, the property will support Brooklyn's expanding creative economy, with facilities for metal and woodwork, ceramics, textiles and printing. Other spaces will support exhibitions and events at the Powerhouse Workshop. 

That need has been growing more acute, as gentrification pushes out artists, artisans and the small manufacturers who work with them in this highly-specialized boutique sector. The foundation anticipates that the project will create more than 100 jobs and open in 2020.