The Urban Pantry
So I haven’t blogged in a while, not that anyone reads this anyway, but hey! The last few weeks have been spent trying to juggle project work with management reports, architectural education module write ups and researching my dissertation topic on Open Content Architecture. I am very excited about my dissertation now, it was originally an ‘undergraduate handbook’ but the words ‘undergraduate’ and ‘handbook’ are pretty limiting in how many people actually receive an (unqualified) opinion on how to to get through architecture school. I decided to turn the tables and see how user generated content can help learning – in essence, taking Wikipedia and applying it to everything we know about architecture. The thing about wiki’s are that in theory anyone can contribute, but only if you have a working knowledge of wikisyntax (a modified html coding format) – so it becomes a design exercise in itself to be able to add content easily. Anyway, if anyone is reading, please contribute your thoughts and ideas about what you think would be useful to help students through the system!
I’ve been spending some time in the studio building some study models – it’s not something I usually do but I feel it is a useful way to help communicate ideas. Here’s the latest drawing; it is what happens when my building typology moves into your neighbourhood. The premise is quite simple. The pantry sets up shop and initiates food growing programs with residents within a 10 minute catchment area (sites are identified), who grow food with the help of experienced growers. Once crops are harvested and everyone has their fill, the majority of the food grown is harvested and taken to the pantry for processing, storage and consumption. Initiate a number of catchment areas and the amount of managed land increases exponentially until the entire city is managed through the interdependence of urban pantries.
The drawings are fairly self explanatory:
Download the PDF version: urban pantry_network_saturation_stage
Currently listening to: Motorhead Bomber
