Located in East London (United Kingdom), What Will the Harvest Be? is more than a garden: it’s an horticultural and social experiment. Conceived by Karen Guthrie and Nina Pope, the project invites anyone to participate both in the free garden club sessions, occurring three times a week from March to the end of October, and in the little events. The gate is always open and the produce is distributed among the gardeners as well as through an honesty stall on site.
Photos by Nina Pope _ All rights reserved.
Reblogged from irishboyinlondon with 19 notes / Permalink
Public Farm 1, Work Ac at PS1 summer 2008.
”(…) Leaving behind the Urban Beach, our project became the Urban Farm — as a symbol of our generations’ preoccupations and hopes for a better and different future. As cities have finally proven their superiority over their suburban counterparts — in everything from quality of life to environmental impact — they should again become our much needed laboratories of experimentation.
Channeling the last utopian architectural projects about the City that examined its potential, represented its promises of liberation, and captured its pleasures — from Superstudio’s Continuous Monument to Koolhaas’s Exodus — Public Farm 1 (P.F.1) is an architectural and urban manifesto to engage play and reinvent our cities, and our world, once again.”
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DIY Urbanism. Almere Oosterwold. MVRDV
“A development strategy for Almere Oosterwold, titled ‘Estate for Initiatives’ is a revolution in Dutch urban planning as it steps away from governmental dictate and invites organic urban growth in which initiatives are stimulated and inhabitants can create their own neighbourhoods including public green, urban agriculture and roads.”
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Carolyn Steel in Ted Talks: “How food shapes our cities”.
It did in the past, and why not could it happen again…
via verticaltheory
Reblogged from verticaltheory with 16 notes / Permalink
Théâtre évolutif, Bordeaux (France)
Through ecosistemaurbano blog, we have just found this interesting urban activity in Bordeaux, France.
Théâtre évolutif carried out by the Bureau d’études collective (France), the artistMarjetica Potrc (Slovenia) and the architects Ooze (Netherlands) (…), is a co-designed and co-constructed landscape and architecture installation aiming to inspire the future design of André Meunier square.
In the heart of Bordeaux (France), alongside the main avenue Cours de la Marne and close to the train station, sits André Meunier Square, one of the city’s biggest public space and yet, vacant. Situated in St Michel, middle class district hosting mainly immigrants, this urban gap, despite many previous attempts of improvement, remains pending to be occupied. Today, along with an urban requalification program of the district, the square is expecting a radical transformation.
The design process began last summer, officially on July 19th, when participants signed a charter aiming to define common objectives and to engage the members in a common process of design and participation of what would become the Théâtre évolutif. The name of the project highlights two intentions: théâtre, meaning theatre, as for a place where a diversity of individuals may interact, and évolutif, meaning having the capacity to evolve with time and adapt itself to its surrounding, both physically and according to its use. Conceived as a template of urban ecosystem, the project combines a landscape and architectural design and underlines the will to inspire a flexible public space, open to occasional interventions and spontaneous use.
Construction began on September 2nd, gathering all members implicated in the project and two architects, Alan Gentil (from Bureau Baroque) and Marc Berbedes (from Bureau d’études Bois Structures). The project was gradually put together between the stubbornly standing do-it-yourself shed, the Cabane à gratter, built in 2008 from waste materials with Les P’tits Gratteurs association (actively working in the district since 2001) and the menacing municipal construction site of the upcoming parking lot, actually occupying ⅔ of the square. According to its environmental commitment, the structure was made with the trunks of the condemned trees of the adjacent construction, and other building sites in Bordeaux. Free of any determined function, it puts forth more than a space, a welcoming face and a potential of various uses and occupations, aiming to inspire long term involvement.
More info and images here
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good:
H.O.R.T.U.S., a ‘cyber greenhouse’ in London that replaces traditional plants with bags of algae.
Claudia Pasquero and Marco Poletto of London-based studio EcoLogic have created a sci-fi ‘greenhouse’ in which 325 transparent photobioreactor bags containing nine different species of algae have taken the place of traditional plants.
Greenhouses of the future! (Visitors blow into plastic tubes to help the algae grow.)
Malthus, Aquaponics device for next generation kitchens
Malthus es una unidad de acuaponia diseñada para la cocina de próxima generación, diseñada por Conceptual Devices. La acuaponia es una técnica que combina el cultivo de peces con el cultivo de hortalizas. Crece una comida al día: una porción de pescado y una ensalada. El pescado proporciona el fertilizante rico para las plantas y, a cambio, las plantas limpian el agua del tanque. Los peces y las plantas han de co-existir en una relación simbiótica.
Malthus consiste en una pecera que contiene 400 litros que puede soportar más de 2 kg de peces como la tilapia, el salmón, pez de color gris o carpa. El agua se bombea a través de 3 estantes cultivados que filtran el agua para los peces.
Malthus se ha diseñado para optimizar el espacio y los costos de la producción de los alimentos. El peso de la pecera es comparable a la de una bañera llena, su anchura es aproximadamente del tamaño de dos neveras pequeñas. Las piezas están hechas de elementos disponibles en la mayoría de tiendas de bricolaje.
Reblogged from zuloarkcollective with 10 notes / Permalink
Elmslie Osler Architect: “Harlem Community Rooftop Farm”
via desingboom:
New york-based practice elmslie osler architect has created “harlem community rooftop farm’, a winning entry for the by the city / for the city urban design week competition where local designers were asked to create an urban improvement in New York City, USA.
Various citizens were asked to complete the phrase “wouldn’t it be great if…” and then entrants were challenged to include the collected observations and suggestions. this design addresses the desire for opportunities to farm and cultivate fresh food within the urban landscape. positioned in harlem along 126th street, a wide and publicly accessible stair leads from the busy street to a converted roofscape above the existing citarella.
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Some articles on Urban Farming
In case you missed Urban Ag Week on Crisp Green, check out these Urban Ag themed articles:
Three Reasons Urban Agriculture Is Important
A Triple Bottom Line Approach to Local Food Production
Just Enacted: New York City Law Encourages Urban Agriculture
Concrete Jungle: Edible Plants Still Thrive In An Urban Landscape
PlantLab Brings High-Tech Vertical Farming To The Netherlands
Food Farm Connect: Building An Urban Agriculture Database
NYC Maker Faire Recap #1: Vertical Theory And Indoor Urban Farming
Windowfarms, explained by Britta Riley in TED Talks.
Britta Riley wanted to grow her own food (in her tiny apartment). So she and her friends developed a system for growing plants in discarded plastic bottles — researching, testing and tweaking the system using social media, trying many variations at once and quickly arriving at the optimal system. Call it distributed DIY. And the results? Delicious.
More information about the windowfarms project, and how can you make your own window-farm here.
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