tilting the field: June 2010

A garden is growing out of an old mill building on the Blackstone River near downtown Pawtucket; one of the birthplaces of the American Industrial Revolution. Pawtucket was dotted with old mill buildings that were used as sweat shops in the early 1800's with long working hours, and in some cases employing child labor. Two centuries later, textile manufacturing had left Pawtucket, being outsourced to other countries and the old mills were left abandoned in the landscape; beginning their process of decay.

The people have stripped away the skin from the wooden A-frame portion of the building, letting the weather in to feed their plants growing up amongst the bones of the old building. Atop the garden the people reside in a modified portion of the building that incorporates new cladding that they built using the clapboards from the removed skin. In some places on the wall they have extended rows of the clapboards out to hold soil for plants to grow along the wall.

The complex was chosen primarily because of its discrete nature, its protective qualities, and its easy access to the river. The garden is located in the center of the complex surrounded on all sides by different buffers. On the East side there is a 3-story, rectangular brick building. It has a good view of the surroundings from the roof and lots of large rooms filled with old equipment. On the South side there is a large rock embankment of mostly poison ivy bordering the complex and the old school. The West side is the river, 120 feet wide; it flows at a pretty good pace because the Pawtucket Falls are only a half-mile downstream. To the North, the only access to the garden is down a narrow alley between the brick building to the East and the wooden building that holds the garden.

On the West side there is a path that runs along the river. It has limited access to the garden by means of drawbridge across a moat that is separated from the river by a large ceramic wall that supports the path itself. The people water their plants during dry times using water from the moat. Once a week, the people lay the bridge across the moat to allow visitors to cross the moat to barter and trade with them for the surplus produce from their garden.

This summer, people will be seeking out new sites for growing. . .

Land Farm to Vertical Farm

Through the remembrance of the demolished "Providence Fruit and Produce Warehouse" this new structure reignites the column bay structure, dimensions, floating lanterns on the roof and reinterprets its meaning.

The transition from land farming to vertical farming has become more familiar to society. Land farming (gardening) is an individual experience where as vertical farming represents production. This agricultural center encompasses these two components. Growing beds are designed and constructed for the production of fruit and produce, which then begin to transition and manipulate in form to become a land farming experience for the entering public. This transition allows for the public to be more interactive with the idea of farming and gardening. The experience from land farm to vertical farm is physically portrayed through the manipulation of growing beds.

The longitudinal grain of this building is utilized with a train running within the structure; transporting fruit and produce from the vertical farming area (west) to the public market (east). Perpendicular to the longitudinal building are ramps intersecting the structure that allow for the dumping of compost.

Land farming becomes vertical farming where learning centers

begin. Growing beds rise up to become vertical farming and structure for the learning centers on the southern side of the building. Learning centers are established where lanterns were constructed in the previous structure.

Reintroducing Food

Site Context

In its proximity to Pawtucket's public transportation hub, city hall, and info center (which all lie almost directly across the Blackstone River), as well as two neighboring high schools and the potential of the Blackstone Bike Path - the Blackstone Ave site possesses a large potential for active pedestrian access. In addition to this potential, the easy accessibility by freeway 95 presents a strong vehicular approach to the site.

Initial Observations

A strange detail on the site that caught my attention was a large circular opening in a masonry wall. Built to house a large industrial fan, still in place, but boarded up long ago, a small silver of light cuts between wood planks and steel blades to let a minuscule shred of sun filter down into the industrial thread room. Studying this detail (below) allowed me to understand the structure as more than just a series of disconnected, uncommunicative rooms. Instead I begun to understand that there were moments in the structure where the building almost de-laminated from itself (below)- pushing itself up or out to present its odd planes as strange sun surfaces. To better understand these quirky moments and potential continuities between spaces, I studied the structural grain of the two buildings (below).

Viability of Vertical Farming

After group work, where a proposal focusing on the urban agricultural center's role as acentermore than a production zone was explored, I came back to individual work questioning the viability of vertical farming. While the profit of vertical farming is much much higher per foot over normal farms, the energy use by heating and lights and the massive water requirement (in an structure not precisely up to the challenges of massive weight additions) presented themselves as serious problems. So, what's wrong with the way we farm now? As identified by a earlier group study (posted earlier in this blog) the distance between production and consumption presents both a massive carbon footprint and a massive disconnect. Yet, (all) transportation is only 3rd in the list of contributors to the greenhouse gases. First is energy production and second is livestock. The curious thing is- Americans, on average, eat 7 times as much meat as the FDA recommends. Many studies have been drawing links between lifestyle diseases (heart disease, diabetes, some cancers) and countries with high meat consumption, such as America. The question then, perhaps, is the question of diet. It's the reintroduction of food into our culture. The idea that food is not merely what we eat, but what we grow, or what is grown and that we buy, what we cook, what we eat, and even what we recycle.

Program

The program, then, of my proposal provides the means to begin this cultural shift. It exists in two cycles: education and purchasing (see below). The educational cycle is broken down in three zones: 1. making- the ability to adapt ones built environment (at its most essential level- a shop), 2. growing- facilities to lend actual experience to various types of growing (seedling nursery, dark light growing with mushrooms, hydroponics, aquaponics and seasonal growing), and 3. cooking- the ability to both cook and the knowledge what to cook (at its most essential level- a cooking space with demonstration room). The purchasing has two tracts: 1. market- answering the very pertinent question of availability (supported by a private hydroponic system), 2. cafe- offering a food option for the quite local high schoolers roaming for lunch. (All diagrammed below).

Stents (or the intervention)

Then if the program is to reflect different stages in this cultural understanding of food, the proposal is then to expose connections between the different programs. As one is purchasing food, how can they be aware of the means by which their very food is being produced? Massive green walls (green in diagram below) align themselves to the previously identified planes of light the buildings idiosyncratically provide, to cut between floors and program. Like a stent, they open the buildings along the seams of grain, breaking spaces previously conceived as one-story singularities into two-story connective tissues. Some exist externally, some step inside for non-seasonal growing and as a response the grain weakens between them and the sun, allowing edible growth. Similarly, the pedestrian edge opens to the vehicular edge, and circulation is allowed directly through the site with a weak-grain circulation path (yellow in diagram below).