Aquaponics

Fish Farms with a Side of Greens
I have always had an eye on this industry in terms of its ability to work in a closed loop...where waste becomes food and vice-versa. The "cradle to cradle" for the food industry?

" Aquaponics — a combination of aquaculture, or fish cultivation, and hydroponics, or water-based planting — utilizes a symbiotic relationship between fish and plants. Fish waste provides nutrients for the plants, which in turn filter the water in which the fish live. Cuttings from plant are composted to create food for worms, which provide food for the fish, completing the cycle."

The Foodprint Project

Foodprint NYC is the first in a series of international conversations about food and the city.

The free afternoon program will include designers, policy-makers, flavor scientists, culinary historians, food retailers, and others, for a wide-ranging discussion of New York’s food systems, past and present, as well as opportunities to transform our edible landscape through technology, architecture, legislation, and education.


related link at Urban Omnibus

Get a Degree in Ruralism

photo credit

In reading AKASH KAPUR's "letter from India", Agriculture Left to Die at India's Peril, one begs the question of whether urbanists, designers, planners and architects aren't missing the issue by not focusing on RURAL development and only on urban. While the drive is for greater urbanization, and yes, the needs for water, housing and waste management will be of major necessity, but shouldn't we be addressing this in the most "sustainable" of manners, and thus nipping this at the bud? And instead asking, Why are people moving into the cities, and how can we improve the RURAL experience? Thus addressing and supporting issues such as agriculture and food supplies, safe water and sanitation. Does waiting till the critical mass appear in the city makes sense? Or should we not be addressing these issues on a more dispersed scale - that of the rural?

rural desigers...ruralist!

see my earlier related blogposts

Food Traceability

Farm 776: Linking object with landscape...connecting food with its source.

Forging a Hot Link

"Beginning this month, customers who buy its all-purpose whole wheat flour ... can go to findthefarmer .com, enter the lot code printed on the side of the bag, and visit with the company’s farmers and even ask them questions."

other sources:
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/04/do_you_know_whe.php

Seed Project

David Cohen's The Seed Project

This "art" project asks people to plant organic basil seeds anywhere and everywhere. Its invites one to take the element of nature and imposes it upon the more "unnatural" environments within our everyday lives.

In regards to our urban environment, existing visual cues of "natural" have become so urbane that many fail to even recognize it as plant life. This project shakes up your daily commutes, questioning place, location and purpose of plant life in our built environments.










In a time of extreme greenwashing, what are the new visual cues of true environmental action?
What locations, programs, buildings, forms of employment within a concrete jungle of a city can programmed for understanding basic living processes?
What new forms of urban gardening can harvest not only moments of contemplation, but todays lunch?

Similar movements:
Guerrilla Gardners

Urban Food Chain

Urban farming. I have been seeing many more of these images lately. This urgent need for good food, close food and cheep food - especially in urban poor neighborhoods. These new models explore farming as architecture.

How does this concept work within the local/neighborhood/community? And what other sort of programming works within the field of farming? What are the schedules of the crops in relation to the local inhabitants, day v. night, seasonal? What sort of local wildlife (birds/pidgins/rats!) can become included/avoided within the activities of urban farming? How is energy created, used, processed, transfered (sun, light, electric, gas, oil?) Educational, social and cultural values?

How is it accessed, transportation? pick up? delivery?

Image by SOA Architects, from NYTimes article

Station Infrastructure

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, as of 2002, there were 117,100 gas service stations in the U.S., of which 84,700 had convenience stores. That is just a bit lower than the number of grocery stores in the US (169,414 - http://www.manta.com/mb_34_B619B_000/grocery_stores).

As we enter peak oil, and the already decreasing use of automobiles (In March, Americans drove 11 billion fewer miles on public roads than in the same month the previous year, a 4.3 percent decrease — the sharpest one-month drop since the Federal Highway Administration began keeping records in 1942. from NYC see April 24th blog post below). What will become of our gas stations? Or what is the new infrastructure of energy going to look like, or how could it utilized the existing grid of our antiquated service stations? Hydrogen, solar....electric?

Outside of depots for transportation, how can this matrix of "energy centers" provide human energy? Growing stations? Water stations? fruit and vegetables? greenhouses?

Convenience stores for calories and not CO2!