Architecture

(King's Vineyard London by Soonil Kim. Bigger version.)

Off and on for the last year, we followed the progress of a vertical studio at the Architectural Association tasked with this central question: Can extremes of programmatic effectiveness blend with the fragility of human habitat?

Most of the students approached the problem via industrial food production, which when blended into the city can create urban Edens in one extreme or situations reminiscent of the stockyards in Upton Sinclair's The Jungle in another. Intrigued by their investigations, we asked the tutors, Nannette Jackowski and Ricardo de Ostos, the duo behind the spectacular Hanging Cemetery of Baghdad and the newest pamphlet, Untold Stories, for images and any explanatory text. We like four projects in particularly and so much so that we've decided to post them individually.

The first of these is a proposal for an airborne vineyard by Soonil Kim.


(King's Vineyard London by Soonil Kim. Bigger version.)

Writes Kim:

 

Inspired by the urban grains especially the railway network from both St. Pancras and King’s Cross Station around the site, the design is a formal continuation of the topography while reinforcing the colonisation of air space by winery branches. The audacious structure, the winery and the vineyard for red wine grapes are connected by a suspended transport network enabling the use of ground space for a public park. With a capacity to produce 10,000 bottles of red wine annually the project re-articulates private and public space blending productive infrastructure with quality areas to Londoners and tourists.

One can certainly imagine such a network built to grow others things, such as vegetables, herbs, fruits, cash crops, commercial flowers and plants, with the winery turned into a farmer's market.

Need more space to grow? Simply extend it. Cities may have a lot of rooftop space for farming, but the negative space above people's heads is exponentially greater.


(King's Vineyard London by Soonil Kim. Bigger version.)


(King's Vineyard London by Soonil Kim. Bigger version.)

A tentacled superorganism creeping out rhizomatically to the suburbs and towards sunlight.

In the Archives:
On agro

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See also the Second project using aquaculture (still in London), and Third one on farmacy as well as Forth one on gastronomy garden

Related Links:

Personal comment:

Faire "pousser" la nourriture en ville pour éviter de la transporter (parfois de très loin) = urban farming ou agro-tecture: une thématique qui monte. Le premier projet de ce type est à mettre selon moi au crédit de MVRDV. Leur projet "Metacity Datatown" cherche à montrer une ville autonome, sans développer plus avant l'idée de l'agriculture urbaine, tandis qu'un projet à peine plus récent, "Pig City", parle lui d'une ville dédiée à la production biologique de viande de porc...