Come join us on our journey through the Lotus Hydroponic Garden Project! We’re Freedom By Design (FBD), an architecture student-led group focused on using design to give back to our communities, and this year we’re working with the Gatehouse Garden on 119th Street in NYC, a space that already does so much to teach the community about growing food, sustainability, and caring for the environment. Our project, the Lotus Hydroponic Garden, is something we’ve been designing together from the ground up. It’s a small but impactful system that combines a koi pond with hydroponic planting, where the fish help feed the plants, and the plants help clean the water, creating a self-sustaining cycle.

We’re also designing the space around it to make it feel more welcoming and usable, adding areas for seating and gathering so it becomes more of a community spot, not just a garden installation. Everything we’ve designed is based on making the space sustainable, accessible, and long-lasting for the people who use the garden every day. As students, we’re taking this project all the way through designing, fabricating parts off-site, and then building it ourselves on-site.

To make this happen, we’re raising money for materials like the pond system, filtration and water components, lumber, planting systems, and vegetation. This project really means a lot to us because it’s something that will stay in the community and continue to be used, learned from, and cared for over time. Any support truly helps us turn this from a design into something real, and we appreciate it more than anything.

FBD Team:

Pop Joslaine Manos

Isabella Gomez

Elizabeth Gomes

Anna Leonova

Leslie Martinez

Fatiha Tazrin

Noah Lettrick

Nicholas Balbuena

Jorge Alvarez Morel

Elizabeth Moore

Mentor:

Steve Preston