By creating living and growing space in a dense vertical format Farm City reduces the need for sprawling suburbs, eliminates food travel distance and creates a living architecture that is part of an urban ecosystem. Farm City allows urban dwellers to be responsible for the production of their food: to be farmers or gardeners. We have lost touch with our relationship to food. Farm City is a place where we can watch our food grow daily and take delight in our own sustenance.

Cities have always been dependent on the land beyond their periphery. The invention of agriculture supported the development of cities and a dramatic increase in human population. Multi-level housing was developed over time to house the growing population in close proximity. With the advent of plumbing, electricity and the elevator the skyscraper was developed as the archetype of multi-level housing. The advent of the car brought with it an ease of mobility that allowed settlements to grow out from the city and into the farmland. These sprawling suburban forms consume valuable farmland, increase travel distance, encroach on ecosystems and are, for the most part, unproductive land.

The skyscraper and the car represent two diametric poles of modern social aspirations. The skyscraper is a proximity device – it allows people to live and work in close proximity. The car is a mobility machine – it allows people to work and live at increased distances. The car allows us to live where farms used to be. Farm City is a way to bring the farms into to the city by using the skyscraper model to allow us to be close to our food. Farm City is a way for cities to grow up.

Farm City brings food production back into the city. The proximity of the food production would allow us to oversee our agricultural practices and ensure that they are safe. Keeping food production within our cities would stop the encroachment of agricultural lands into our ecosystems, and help them regenerate. These ecosystems are essential to creating cleaner air, safer drinking water, and diverse habitats as well as reversing climate change.

By putting housing and farms in the same building Farm City creates symbiotic relationships between energy, water and waste. Heat generated from the greenhouses is used to heat the housing units. Biomass from the greenhouses is used for energy. Solar energy is generated from the large glazed surface. Grey-water and compost generated from the housing is used in the greenhouses. But more importantly it makes food production part of our culture by making gardens visible and allows us to participate in our own sustenance.

Project details

Farm city site

About the Author

Chris Hardwicke (Canada)
informal connective
http://www.informal.ca