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Securing Scarcities: The Territorialisation of Production

Part 2 Project 2013
Christopher Turner
 University of Plymouth | UK
This project was done in a ‘live project’ scenario – located in a real place, discussed with and inspired by a local business association and owners of the site in Warsaw, Poland. The foundation of the project is based on a belief that architecture could become an integral part of the social, economic and political struggle for a better world.

Identifying social, economic and ecological imperatives for change the urban strategy suggests growth can no longer continue based on its current synthetic linear processes. The current economic order is premised on capital accumulation with scant regards to social well-being and employment, leading to a fractured society with extreme socio-economic differentiation.

The strategic goals of the urban strategy are focused on empowering the individual through giving them the tools to construct a new and more equitable society based on the power of networks of trust, co-operation, symbiosis and mutual agenda. It is a facilitator, providing a platform for the citizens of Warsaw to shape and determine their own sustainable future. The strategy suggests a future based on circular organic systems that establish a symbiosis between multiple economic logics. By utilising natural systems, harnessing ecology and feeding the process as required the people of Ursus can reap huge dividends.

The proposals establish an artificial ecosystem driven by natural processes, fostering a synthesis between landscape and architecture. Instead of seeking to extract as much as humanly possible from the natural environment through intensive agriculture, and raw material extraction, this system for a new form of urban agriculture will introduce biological loops for restorative purposes rather than exploitation.

Giving people ownership over systems of food and energy production could be a potential source of empowerment for the creation of a more equitable society, changing perceptions of how humans relate to ecological waste streams, biological systems and economics.

The proposals test the interface between residential dwellings and productive industry, in particular the high tech production of plant crops and aquaculture systems, giving people stewardship over emerging technologies in return for tangible rewards such as fresh produce and shared equity in new models of cooperatives.

Tutor(s)
2013
Changes in the spatial structure of our cities are representative of power struggles being played out in a wider economic, political and cultural arena
A new system is proposed that will replace an economy based on a linear route of consumption in a world of finite resources
Circular organic systems that work in symbiosis with a multitude of logics including industrial and post industrial are by their nature regenerative
The growth of the new system will depend on what actors will ‘plug into’ the growing civita network
These proposals for Ursus are an example of how the spatial component may develop with a set of assumed actors
Greening the site for remediation, leisure, habitat and productivity
Dwellings open onto a communal garden terrace with shared access to the production biome, composting and recycling chutes
Connected Waste Streams: Key to the interface between residential and technological systems of food production is the sharing of ecological waste streams
The proposals aim to instigate circular organic systems that work in symbiosis with natural systems
Rainwater run-off is collected in channels open to the street, providing performative qualities to the integrated infrastructure and connecting people to the role they play in local ecosystems
The facade has been designed so as to maximise the efficiency of the convective loops required for the indirect solar-gain space heating of residential accommodation from the biomes
Growing food in a communal way, in community gardens and city farms can break down barriers between people with regard to differences in age, ethnicity, class and gender
The climate modifying canopy of the growing biome primarily serves the technological needs of the hydroponic systems and the open aerobic reactors of the living water remediation system
To upscale operations and test concepts pioneered at the productive biome test facility existing structures on site can be utilised for industrial-scale food production
Lichen growing on the biological concrete will act as a ‘bio-indicator’, with species changing as air pollution drops
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