WALLENBERG
BELOW: Example of a food hub in site and the farming mechanism in use RIGHT: Example food hub drawn in plan and section FOOD HUB: An aerial view of the Food Hub on the Landscape. Each hub is located along a major road or intersection.
Closing the Loop
Combining two of these modular units forms a Food Hub. Joining different combinations of the program species creates ten different permutations of the Food Hub. Within the program species, architectural forms mediate the relationship between the two programs. The series of folding operations creates states of play between the two types of inhabitants through sensory overlap. In the Corral-Market, a fold moves farm animals upward while shoppers browse below listening to the sounds of the baa-ing and moo-ing. In the Barn-Motel, farm animals and tools are stored below while a series motel pods house tourists above. In the Silo-Market, the harvest moves through a horizontal silo, and is dispensed at varying stages of the drying process through tentacles touching the ground. In the Corral-Restaurant, patrons and animals eat across from each other, separated by a wrinkle in the ground that serves as a bar and food trough. In the Barn-School, students take classes above with a direct view of farmers laboring below. In each case, the two different inhabitants occupy the same space through either sight, sound, or smell, allowing for a
spatial experience that makes acts of consumption and production explicit. When two of these program species combine to form a Food Hub, they enclose a shared square, which formally and programmatically closes the loop between the two spaces. The square serves as an area of programmatic overspill, allowing for an amalgam of different activities to occur.
SHARED SENSE OF PLACE Mirroring the companion program polyculture, the proposed farming mechanism asks if there is a mechanism of farming where property and farmland could be shared at various sites. Here, ideas of crop rotation and companion crops are combined. While farmers rotate crop to preserve soil integrity, neighboring plots are able to share property and land to their mutual benefit if they rotate companion crops into the shared space. This allows for a new element of Le Terroir, in which ones neighbor becomes a part of the sense of place, a shared sense of place.