jk,

the first issue you identify isn't a problem just in USA. Most cities have this problem. Although, in the developing world (especially South and Central America and Africa) peri-urban and urban agriculture does in some cases provide an significant (upwords of 15-30 percent) of food for cities.

For the second issue, if you haven't already check out the work of Richard Haag who has been pushing his idea of edible landscaping to replace the American suburban lawn, for a while now.

its hard to consider the american 'lawn' as a waste of space when America already grossly overproduces our main crop of corn to the point that prices have sunken so low that the gov't subsidizes the farmers

-government subsidies artificially render large farms AND long-haul trucking infrastructure cost-effective. freight rain networks are way more efficient (pure energy and monetary economies of scale) and the freeways were built in the 1950s only with Big Auto pressure.

-I think the expo is super ripe for a pastiche of the american lawn. that is an awesome idea!!! its really odd and really american-totally hard-coded into our history. go back to Homestead Act and shit, when people could gain title just by having a lawn. (a slight exaggeration)?

"his own personal land-grant"

Well the project that comes to mind that addresses both those concerns is Edible Estates. I know the website is horrendous, but it's a great project that's been featured by some well-known mags and museums. I'm not sure where that gets you but it's certainly something to be aware of if those are your two touchpoints.

**rain = rail. pre-coffee y'all

I think taste is a factor here, too. One that we care not to really address into too much depth.

For instance, horses are far easier to produce than cattle as horses can survive in land far more desolate than cattle can. And the feed-to-meat ratio on horses is substantially smaller than with other sources of red meat. Horses are far less territorial in space constrained settings than cattle are-- making it easier to have denser populations if we ignore the other problems that come with high animal densities.

In the UK, a variety of hobbyfarming is starting to grow into a practical meat source. That is, crocodile and alligator farming seems to be a practical urban meat source. A substantial amount of meat can be produced in an area as small as a flooded basement. Because alligators and crocodiles have incredibly high disease tolerances, they can pretty much be raised in sewage. The problem with this potential meat crop is you have to feed it meat to get meat. However, cold-blooded animals have the ability to 'voluntarily' adjust their metabolism meaning that they only grow and move if being fed and can go quite a long time without any significant food source.

But the question is... would Americans eat crocodiles and horses?

Other 'novelty' meats in the US have yet to catch on-- emus, ostriches, buffalo et cetera. I think there's even been a few people who were brave enough to try to farm water buffalo and zebras.

I want to point out I was getting the work of two different people mixed up. Richard Haag and his work with edible landscaping and Fritz Haeg's work Edible Estates.

thanks for reminding me copper.

previously discussed:

agricultural urbanism??,
cows in the rumpus room
Urban Farming
Bracket issue that's supposed to come out soon
urban ag certification?

and several others I'm missing... I remember seeing a couple studio projects in the school blogs...

This is a good documentary to awareness of monopoly of mass food production and its serious consequences. This movie came out a few years ago and there is a chance that you already watched, if not, this is a very important first step. The future of food

#2 could be really interesting - mapping the amount of unused front or southern exposure lawns in particular cities that rely heavily on importing food. I think you'll find half your time is spent just gathering information..

oddly, a lot of people don't mind you plowing under their front lawn as long as you take care of it - the biggest issue is usually not with finding space, it's finding people who are willing to take care of these gardens. it's also very inefficient for an individual or group to tend to a few plots here and there spread out over entire neighborhoods. the visual of seeing everyone's front lawn turned into a garden is seductive, but it doesn't make much sense from an operational standpoint.

while we might loathe antiseptic grass lawns, they are easier for the homeowner to maintain.

thanks for the links, guys. yea toaster, that seems like way to begin.

I guess the difficulty with investigating the lawn is, how can i generate architecture (a pavilion) from this issue? I mean, the most obvious and direct solution is to simply grow food on the lawn (edible estates), but obviously my intent shouldn't be to just transform a lawn into a garden. I think if I could explore solutions on a community/urban scale it might be easier to come up with an interesting scheme, but i have to be thinking in terms of a building and its site.

i don't know... maybe there is potential for some sort of modular scheme, as suburban lawns are all so typical. what do you think?

nam, that makes sense. I was thinking it's weird that there are multiple dudes doing the exact same thing out there when it really doesn't seem to be a money-maker! Fritz is always at the top of my head for this stuff since he was my freshman drawing instructor and it's been really entertaining to watch as his work gained ground nationally.

That is awesome copper. Must have been an interesting teacher. Was that before or after he started hosting "happenings" (of a sort) in his dome in LA?

and there is actually, a group of people in my town who are actually landscapers (gardeners not licensed landscape architects) and permaculture types who have a business (not sure how successful it is) wherein they will not only do the design and planting put also maintenance. Seems like that is a not bad business model, at least from the perspective of addressing toast's valid point about people not having interest or time in doing maintenance. It is almost like a reverse CSA....

Oh woops, link is ediblelandscapers

You might want to reevaluate Le Corb and the ideology behind superblocks.

...tumbleweed... that is super cool. did you make it yourself or find it somewhere?

ill comment on the rest of this when i get a chance later...

@unicorn - good point, a zoning/block re-organization could provide new space for agriculture.

@tumbleweed - that's so cool! unfortunately my project partner is vegan and has expressed strong disinterest in anything meat-related, ha ha.

anyways, this thread has been really helpful, but i'm still stuck at translating this suburban lawn theme into a pavilion's architecture. maybe the building could be made of components that when disassembled, are used in a city's edible lawns? idk...

the pavilion IS a lawn.


? too trite? or contemplative? the lawn is a visible extension of the living space, where program unfolds? It is a manicured product, essential to the landscape/environment.architecture of the american detached single-family home?


oooooo!!!! make architecture of a lawn. interpret. structural lawn? inhabitable lawn? lawn you can occupy to understand the futility of resources squandered on an class symbol? or just a meticulous patch of bluegrass? I am thinking like a play on arne quinze, a 3d lawn of 2 x 4 or some visual/physical representation of the resources/carbon/$$$ (2 x 4 per 1 lb C02)that the average american spends on lawncare AND not organic produce? that we care about the wrong horticulture? that people get cancer from lawncare treatments (mostly golfers) dude its so ripe..............

This topic is very deep. Suburban lawns are symbols of leisure, they remove their owners from the dirty idea that food comes from the earth (plants and animals) and is processed at packing plants. Suburbia came about in part because we wanted to shelter ourselves from this idea, in order to experience bliss and luxury in our lives, which was probably a goal of mankind since agriculture was invented. Mastering agriculture was a great achievement in humankind, allowing our bodies and MINDS to grow and develop, making us who we are today. Now that luxury isn't hip anymore and Green is, are you suggesting that an agricultural revolution is emminent and it will come in the form of urban farms? How would, or why would microplots feed the world anyways? I have a garden in the city, a great one, but it just sounds trendy, and ultimately wasteful. I do like to visit a restuarant where you can dine on the patio among the herb garden, and yes they use the herbs in the kithen and that is their thing. It is quite luxurious really. I'm just glad they don't grow the shrimp on site.

I didn't think of the lawn as a leisure symbol - but this is totally correct.

I'M not suggesting an agricultural revolution is imminent... but i would venture to say an agricultural revolution will soon be necessary - earth's population is growing at a rate too rapid for our current system to handle.

why do you say a personal garden is wasteful, strawbeary?

@msudon

awesome - thoughts like this are really helping me get my own creative juices flowing!

Almost every suburban home I have been to has a garden in the back yard - at least 75%. Personally, I grew-up with tomatoes and other vegetables ripening on the window sill. This is nothing new. A suburban lawn and garden center is one of my first / profound memories...that fertilizer smell, and the freshly cut grass...the smell of oil-mixed gas and the sound of a lawnmower - ah, suburbia. It was boring and a great privilege. Green Roofs should double as gardens whenever possible. Tomatoes love the sun.

jk3hl, sorry I shouldn't say wasteful, but I will explain my thoughts. Urban and suburban gardens are luxuries, a place to repose, connect with nature and get our hands dirty in the veggie plot if we want. We can grow food here but the form they take and their reason for being is not to feed the families that own them. If they are retrofitted or designed for that purpose in the future, what would they look like? Retrofitted with greenhouses and irrigation systems to grow a sizeable amount of food? What I pondered was if THIS idea was wasteful, more wasteful than what we do now? Does everybody have little farm tools, preserve their own veggies, work extra long hours in the spring and fall to plant and harvest? Should we hibernate in the winter in colder climates to conserve food? Do we turn the basement family rooms into large pantries where we prepare, preserve and store the harvest? Maybe the gardens work more like communes where a few workers mind the crops for the rest? What do you do when it is high tomato season and your neighborhood garden produced 50 bushels of tomatoes and can't eat them all before they go bad? Are they wasted? What happens when your neighborhood didn't slaughter enough cows to last the winter? Are you willing to survive on potatoes in the name of "sustainable" farming?

I grew up on a farm, we had acres of gardens that served our family: potates, onions, tomatoes, raspberries, strawberries, lettuce, rhubarb, horseradish, apples, plums you name it. It was a lot of work, we ate tomatoes for every meal for two months, but we still had to get food from the grocery store. It is more than a full time job. I can think of many other luxuries I would give up before trying to save the world thru growing a sliver of the food I consume on an urban lot. It is an interesting topic, but I smell a trend, and while not wasteful, I ask is it MORE sustainable than well managed local crops (which we need more of) and eating what is in season. But that isn't as sexy and thought provoking as designing an urban farm, so it is a trend. Would you eat only (or almost exclusively) just the foods that can be produced where you live? No more fresh fruits in winter? Is that an advancement in society or falling backwards? I think it is a luxury to even think about microfarming, but please, I want to hear more. Just trying to throw out some questions you maybe haven't asked yourself yet. I am excited for an agricultural revolution, but a different one of sorts, not that I know what it looks like. We do have a lot of untapped capacity in producing much more than we do right here in the states. But there are a lot of politics and economics involved. For instance, your diet (if you live in the states) is largely subsidized because our farms are so productive we would have to reduce production to create demand to drive prices higher. Instead, we keep production high and export the surplus. Exporting our surplus grain from our modern agricultural methods is in turn what keeps your american diet relatively varied, affordable and healthy, not the other way around.

yes, yes, yes tumbles, I love what you do, and am very excited about your interest in agriculture. I'm glad you shared your experiences because I think you would agree that simply growing food in a mindful way still doesn't equal sustainable. But perhaps what you do describe as the human connection you make IS quite useful in promoting sustainability by reminding oneself to be more mindful of the choices we make! Thereby promoting locally grown and in-season foods, less processing, less waste, less transport and packaging, consuming more nutritionally dense foods, and most of all, counting our blessings.

strawbeary - excellent post - I agree that it's a trend - and it seems to be dominating discourse right now in academia... however, I still think it's an interesting discussion and I like seeing these kinds of projects - especially if they are NOT solely about food production. You can grow and "farm" other resources for things like energy (probably the most important), building materials, etc...

I've worked with a couple groups who use urban farms more as a teaching tool rather than food production. they actually have rural sites where they grow most of their veggies since it's more productive to have a single contiguous plot rather than many scattered lots of the same acreage (i.e. you can allow fields to lay fallow to replenish the soil - not something you can do in urban plots). the point of the urban plots is to help city dwellers reconnect with where their food comes from since it's difficult for them to travel out to where farms actually exist anymore.

unicorn - productive farming isn't necessarily about just providing SF - if you know anything about organic farming, there's a much greater relationship to the surrounding ecosystem and using those "natural" resources to your advantage - for example, it doesn't make much sense to have a fruit orchard in the city since you need pollinators - you also need to provide habitat for birds who eat pests - etc. otherwise you're going to have a bunch of chemically treated gardens in the city that produce crops that don't have as much nutritional value as something produced elsewhere.

jk3 - I think you'll gain more traction if you pick a specific place and think about what "natural" resources are not being utilized, or if there is something that is imported that can be easily produced locally.

great point, toaster. totally agree, will run all this by my prof today!

first i just want to say tumbles did you really do that post on just a phone?

Also, regarding strawbeary's excellent point. Yes micro suburban, rooftop farming isn't going to produce all foods (especially the commodity type ones [wheat, corn etc]). Nor is it per se more sustainable than a local or even organic (overseas, chile etc) farm. Mostly depends on what you mean by sustainable. Does it use less energy, does it provide green space, does it reconnect you with the earth?

As i said even in cities in the developing world where urban agriculture plays a much bigger role than in USA and other developed countries the amount of food produced compared to total urban need is small (upwards of 30%) but not insignificance.

The issue of local farmers vs small micro plots on lawns etc is a good one. Local food period is better. However, in terms of scale local farmers growing at scale for business is a more long term strategy.

However, I think the big thing missing in many of these sorts of discussion isn't the growing but the other benefits, which can include;
reducing (or closing) the waste/nutrient loops (urban metabolic systems), providing green public/productive/recreational space, providing possible economic development benefits, or even educational ones (school gardens for example) and finally, even public health ones (just a little more real/fresh foods less processed goods or a venue for exercise).

It is all these other externalities which are positives. However, even most of these only provide their benefits at scale.

JK as for your "pavillion issue". Perhaps, you should use this as an opportunity to critique the need for an architectural object? What about creating systems, processes or scape vs an object?

Or if you must maybe a shed which generates energy, captures rainwater and provides space for gardening or recreation at the home/lawn scale??

Something perhaps something like WORK Architecture Company's Edible Schoolyard project at P.S. 216, profiled here in Metropolis

Something like the image below....

What I'm gleaning from our ideas is that urban farming is a symbol, a medium thru which we can connect to food production. Like a dude ranch. Also, a place to educate and showcase, like a botanical garden. Also a place to experience community, like a park or neighborhood garden. It is a viable and desireable thing for that reason, but on a large scale will not actually feed cities.

As an architect then I ask, What is then the idea of place have to do with this from the human perspective vs the perspective of the plant (food) or animal (livestock)...? By proposing urban farming, we invite the plants and animals to come to the city to live with us, to not only support our diets but now, to satisfy our quest for feeling Green, which is turning into the new luxury. We may even propose new developments that are designed to be urban/agriculture mixed communities on farmable land (or land that can be made farmable with technology). But do we not already have a vast landscape shaped for agriculture, in fact designed for it? Why then would the plants move the city, other than to be exhibits in our pavilions... our homage to nature, which we actually already have in many forms, like, um, the suburban lawn and veggie garden?

I also ask, who has greater mobility and adaptability in our environment? I going with humans. Especially now that the internet has potential to change our concept of space and how we live, work and trade goods/ideas more than the paradigms that were in place when we developed an urban-suburban-rural-ag landscape. Will you move to the farm to practice sustainability? Can people work from anywhere now more than ever? Yup, with a couple of exceptions, like farmers I suppose. So why move the cow to the city when you can move the dude to the country, if he wants? Which is more sustainable? Which is more progressive? Which allows more freedom now and for future generations?

I don't intend for my statements to be anything more than just thought provokers. I like the topic. Don't get me in trouble with your professor.

example: bay state fertilizer

one of the largest purchasers of this fertilizer are florida orange growers.

in short - massachusettians' poop supplies the nutrients for your OJ.

I would ask whether specific foods and specific solutions for them may be more than symbolic. Growing herbs keeps me from wasting, but saving me from buying packs of them that I can only use half of at a time and letting the rest die in my fridge. Heck, it saves them from ever having to be refrigerated. I've long wondered whether a similar efficiency might be achieved by replacing decorative street trees with fruit trees. Everyone picks a little bit as needed and they don't buy bags of oranges or apples at the store, they're using space that would be occupied with trees anyway, and brings fresh fruit to every neighborhood in a city... this seems like a win/win to me. So these thoughts (of admittedly limited scope) make me wonder if there are other ways to integrate food production into our existing environs that would be actually beneficial and not just symbolic?

Well, one consideration is farm-to-fork.

Technically, with the exceptions of some fruits and veggies, frozen vegetables are healthier for you than fresh.* The asterisk is there because obviously if you live on a farm or have the existing farm infrastructure around you, fresh veggies aren't necessarily out of reach.

However, the nutritional value of many fruits and veggies disappears within days of harvest. Spinach is probably one of the most widely eaten veggies in the US. However, it usually takes between 2-3 weeks for it to arrive in the supermarket. That said, spinach loses a majority of its nutrition with a week of harvest.

Nothing can replace fresh spinach... but it is a matter of taste in preparation and consumption. You can't use frozen spinach in a salad! You can however make a creamed spinach dressing for said salad!

The point of this? It makes life too complicated. Now, the internet has been mentioned which makes accessing information easier... but learning 50-150 methods, processes and stipulations for storing and processing every piece of fresh produce around you will make people's head spin. This is kind of the reason we live in a world of Hot Pockets and KFC's Double Downs.




I think an excellent idea for a pavillion would be to make some kind of for-profit operation where people could sell their extra fresh produce and chefs/cooks/et cetera could freeze/process/cook their fresh produce into something shelf-stable and potentially packaged. This would give a community "buying" power so to speak if they are making their own versions of locally sourced Hot Pockets.

I.e., I give you four heads of cabbage.

I either pay a couple of bucks and take home a box of frozen spring rolls or you give me some money and sell them off.

Agricultural revolution gave birth to modern civilization and is the ultimate source of all the wealth we have today. We can do it again, and are poised to do so, but at an agricultural scale. What do we do as architects/planners, besides design kewl museums, gardens, schools and parks to inspire people?

straw, design systems and processes instead of objects

Well, if you are gonig to reinvent the wheel, you might as well make it square.

hhehe

hey guys, here's the main plot for my project this quarter - I ended up veering away from the edible 'lawn' as a concept and began to investigate edible 'micro-plots/farms' that are versatile enough to be used anywhere (on lawns, sure, but other places too).

www.daapspace.daap.uc.edu/~kehlje/jek_plot.jpg

last project of my undergrad... feels strange being done! thanks everyone for the helpful discussion in this thread.

wow, how did I miss this thread the first time? great discussion of the pros and cons of urban ag.

Jk - your link doesn't work. Interested in seeing what you did.

the part that is missing from most of this discourse is water. in the post-peak water world, the greatest limitation on agricultural production will be water (as it already is in some places). Since urban folks will pay 10 to 100 times the price for h20 as rural farmers, it's pretty obvious who will be high and dry. We're already seeing this happen in California and the Colorado river basin. Expect this trend to accelerate west of the 100th parallel.

David Fletcher's piece in the Out of Water Exhibit started to explore how the wealth of 'waste water' in urban areas that may cause a shift to large scale urban farming.

. Happy to say that I shared a bunch of references and base maps with them...

hrm, it's not working? just tried it on both of my computers and it works fine.

I suppose one can always try urban farming the insane Dubai way:

link works for me -

very nice looking board - but I'm not understanding how your idea played out in the final design. this seems to be only explaining the composition of your structure.

do you have any concept diagrams - or something that explains the "micro-plot?"

Another issue worth investigating is the labor-aspect of food production in the US. Corporate agriculture (agribusiness, as opposed to more sustainable small-scale models) was founded on the supposition of a readily available migrant labor force. Without this, the corporate farming model falls apart. A great book that addresses this is "The Lie of the Land" by Don Mitchell which deals mostly with the way labor relations have shaped the California landscape.

This probably diverges from the issues you're investigating, but I think you can't ignore labor issues if you're addressing problems with US agriculture.

I'll blame my obsolete version of firefox:
The image “http://www.daapspace.daap.uc.edu/~kehlje/jek_plot.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

ooh, ha ha. here, d/l a jpg of it at...

www.daapspace.daap.uc.edu/files/download/kehlje/ZXknPDSfGLYnj69EfyPoaAwOYq2tlpCuUPYJfBXzRDg

yea, toaster, i do! a good part of that stuff still needs to be scanned, so eventually i'll get around to posting it.

saw this today - thought it was somewhat related to the discussion further up:

agri-tourism

it's mostly new england (where farming isn't as big as the rest of the country)...