stuck in the middle with you.

                     

One community that I chose to focus on was the Amager Faelled Kolonihave, the red. These allotments in particular have been relocated once and has had new infrastructure, the yellow introduced around it. I first thought that the residents would have protested and fought back against these new developments but through an interview I found out that they had a very nonchalant attitude surrounding their situation. The resident I talked to said that it wasn't issue for them that they had to move to make room for a preschool or to have the metro right across the street from them. I asked her how she felt all of this happening around her. She said that once she enters the kolonihave gates it brings her back to, what I interpreted through gesters, as her serene center. She said that it only helps her to focus harder on her tending her gardens.
As a side note I searched through the Copenhagen Post and found an article that mentioned an Aarhaus allotment community that was moved 40 meters in 1933 to make way for an extension of local zoo.

CPH edition: What's growing in your backyard?

The first Kolonihave I encountered.

Denmark has approximately 6,200 allotment gardens they can be found in all different types of spaces. Often times new structures are built surrounding the communities without any thought for how it will affect the microclimate of these small scale farming communities.

On Orestad, a suburban island of Copenhagen I studied two separate kolonihave translated from Dansk, to allotment.

I remember vividly the first time I encountered what was soon to be labeled kolonihave. It was the end of the first week of being in Copenhagen and I had decided to take my daily walk behind the apartment. As I turned a corner I couldn't believe what was in front of me. Right off of a busy residential road, essentially a boulevard, was a dirt and gravel path that lead to an entire community built around the principle of farming. As I explored Denmark over the next three months I drifted in and out of these communities and saw how the urban fabric was designed around them.

Names of vegetables
translated into Dansk 

Through interviews with residents I developed even more of an appreciation for this type of community. The first interview happened during my initial encounter with this new and mysterious landscape. I was approached by a middle age lady who wanted to know what I was doing in her community. As I learned from her, these communities are victims of vandalism by local teens. When I explained my purpose of being in Denmark she became very receptive to questions I asked and filled me in on the gossip of the kolonihave.

She explained to me what she grows- berries, and what her neighbors, the young couple with a new born, herbs, the 84 yr old, who gardens to stay young,  rhubarb and kale, and the man at the end of the lot who grows his own grapes to press into wine. She spoke about how the community gets together to share the harvest. Despite a language barrier we were able to point out and identify plants.This was one of many people that I encountered through out Denmark.

precedent on a macro lvl.

In this next phase of studio we looked at certain components of the Central New York food system. We divided into groups that  were to collaboratively focus on topics of the topics of the regional market, urban agriculture, and the group I was in regional food production.  Through discussion we broke regional food production down again- into separate topics of garden cities, food shed design, and suburban agriculture. We decided who in the group would be responsible for what case studies could be applied to Central New York. I decided to look at suburban agriculture.

Represented to the left is Granite Quarry in North Carolina. I made an inventory of the grocery stores with in a mile radius of the 128 acre suburban farmstead, represented in red. While a step in the right direction it is in my opinion, not the best model. It was poorly executed and if you have read one of the most recent Landscape Architecture Magazine's, the community collapsed financially.

Represented to the right is Cotorro, Cuba what I would call a better model for the Central New York area. They are currently building a farming web outside of municipalities which then feed a larger food web that goes to capital provinces. This is all in an effort to make the country food secure.

As a final synthesis of the previous precedents I applied what I learned to the local scale of Syracuse, New York. Similar to the procedure of the Granite Quarry case study; I inventoried marts that sells food. If you noticed I did not use supermarket instead I said mart. This is because this portion of Syracuse is considered a food desert. 

Syracuse also has 3,500 vacant properties, estimation highlighted in red, which can open up design opportunities by bridging disciplines.

thinking in systems.

This years studio focuses on regional foodshed design. As you might imagine looking at a foodshed is daunting so the the studio is broken down into groups to focus in on specific scales which a foodshed operates on. My contribution to this project is documented in the following blog posts

The first project of the semester focused on the idea of a system being the concept for design. I was paired with an MLA who has an undergraduate in marketing; the idea that came to this person was having a composting unit that could be on a kitchen counter. Through brainstorming with one another, we decided on what we call the Kitchen Companion.

It is a composting unit that is coupled with two planter boxes that can grow three different types of vegetables, that you would harvest after a growing season, cook in a dinner and and then place the waste in the counter top compost unit. Over time the soil would be changed out with the compost material of your leftovers from the meals you prepare.

The scale that is not represented is the macro scale. This scale would start to represent the community around the kitchen companion. Some of these factors are the trucks and infrastructure that process the food, the delivery of food from the farm to the distributor, and how the consumer decides to get to the supermarket.