The Urban Farmhouse Project : architecture for civic agriculture

Abstract

Out of extensive examination and critique of the industrialized food systems and infrastructures of the 20th century, a social movement has taken off to become a revolution in the last year and a half. Tied to a wide range of topics including health care, economic security, sustainable energy and climate change, food systems have become a keystone issue in imagining a societal paradigm shift for the next century. The good food movement leads the way in this shift, but as yet does not have a recognizable physical form. Inspired by the public nature of this movement and the potential for unique, atmospheric spaces required for food production-- humid, earthy, lush-- this thesis proposes that a new kind of architecture is possible and required in order to collect the historically decentralized activities of urban food production, distribution, consumption and education into one central home, The Urban Farmhouse. Through the development of this new multi-functional space, the movement will also become a place. With an interactive voice and a political face manifest through the interweaving of program and climates, this place will become a new civic building type, one that acts as a measure against monocultures of all kinds, and gathers people around their common need for sustenance-- and pleasure.