Food Urbanism by Birkhäuser

Food Urbanism

Craig Verzone & Cristina Woods

Typologies Case Studies Strategies Edited by Danielle Alexander

Birkhäuser Basel

Introduction

Preface

Principles of Urban Quality

From Continuous Productive Urban Landscapes to Food Urbanism

Essay by Andre Viljoen and Katrin Bohn 4

Typologies

Sites

Growers

Production Entities

Urban Forms and Ingredients

Toolkit

105

Case Studies

115

Agro-Urban Park Bernex, Switzerland

117

Design Research in Practice

151

Urban Scenarios

193

Urban Acupuncture

225

Urban Strategies

243

Appendix

255

The Atlas

256

Selected Bibliography and References

260

References

261

Contributors to the Food Urbanism Initiative

264

About the Authors

265

Plantons! The FUI team intervenes at the Maison de Quartier Sous-Gare in Lausanne 2013

1 Introduction

Preface

Plantons! The FUI team intervenes at the Maison de Quartier Sous-Gare in Lausanne 2013.

by Craig Verzone and Cristina Woods

In May 2013, the city of Lausanne, Switzerland, hosted its first Journées des Alternatives Urbaines, an event inciting dialog about the evolution of Swiss cities and highlighting forwardthinking, community-based sustainable urban initiatives. This was the backdrop for the pilot project Plantons!, a play on words meaning both Let’s plant! and Seedlings! in French. A daylong intervention, on the grounds of the community center adjacent to Lausanne’s train station, generated a small productive landscape for the neighborhood. Equipped with shovels, topsoil, and mulch, nearly a dozen researchers from the Food Urbanism Initiative and as many volunteers weeded, composted, and planted beds of 30 raspberry and 50 strawberry plants. We shared in a collective performance of nourishing and instilling new life in the earth. This act revealed the speed at which change can occur and the richness of human contact that ensues. Unfortunately, those food-bearing plants are now all gone. The absence of any trace of the initial intervention reveals the fragility of productive landscapes, due to challenges in securing the proper spaces for them to thrive in and the sustainable labor to maintain them. Food Urbanism examines the complex relationship between food and the city, investigating how the thoughtful integration of food production into urban design and planning can achieve a form of new urban quality, measured by spatial character, community vitality, and ecological performance, all within a densifying city. Aiming to contain sprawl, the inward growth and densification of cities carry the risk of loss of quality of life and space. Competition for urban space historically resulted in the removal of productive surfaces from the city: viable agriculture required space, fertile soil, sunlight, and clean water, while refrigerated trucking allowed for the transportation of food over greater distances. As a result, urban dwellers became disconnected from one of their most basic needs: food. In many cities, studies reveal a marked decrease in the quality of nutrition and health, as well as social alienation between food producers and consumers. However, if food production infiltrates the city, it competes not only with other urban needs but also with the rural professional farming sector. At the same time, the current cycle of food production and distribution is taking an increasingly higher environmental toll on the planet, resulting in a depletion of resources: arable land, water, nitrogen, and potassium. The subject is rife with complexities and obstacles. In 2009, the Swiss National Science Foundation launched National Research Program 65 New Urban Quality (NRP 65) which aimed at “developing concepts and strategies for new urban quality and testing the feasibility of the research findings”. The brief called for “innovative ways to achieve urban development, urban redevelopment, and urban planning in Switzerland that are realizable in the medium and long term”. The Food Urbanism Initiative was one of five projects selected for this National Research Program. The research was carried out between 2010 and 2013 by a multidisciplinary team

INTRODUCTION

Plantons! The FUI team intervenes at the Maison de Quartier Sous-Gare in Lausanne 2013.

INTRODUCTION

led by the design firm Verzone Woods Architectes with the expertise of Agroscope, ETH Zurich's Agri-food and Agri-environmental Economics group and EPF Lausanne's Media Lab. The topic was born out of a passion to cultivate fruits and vegetables at close proximity to home and work, which we practiced personally, and which imbued our design work at Verzone Woods Architectes. Our ongoing professional design testing, dating back to 1996 with the ground plane for Le Corbusier’s Cité Radieuse, thus extended into three years of scientific research, yielding the insights found here. Groundwork for the research involved the collection and analysis of over one hundred built and unbuilt precedent projects into an online atlas (www.foodurbanism.org/atlas/). Many recent publications highlight these important projects which served as the basis of our efforts to understand, analyze, and categorize emerging practices and their social, environmental, and spatial implications in the realm of urban studies. The research led to further design exploration: the development of projects and strategies that include urban agriculture as a programmatic component. By specifying how cities can integrate cultivation into urban renovation and growth, we aim to add insight regarding the intersection between urban food and landscape systems.

New orchard at the foot of Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation in Briey-en-Forêt, France Bruno Reichlin and Verzone Woods Architectes, 1996

In the introduction to Projects and Urban Strategies, a comparative study, Robert Prost traces various trends in city-making from recent decades: in the era of planning, an overarching thought process was embraced, determining exhaustive objectives, with a lack of attention to feasibility. An evolution toward more strategic planning inspired by the industrial sector ensued, yet cities have continued to develop through a collection of operations based on real estate and economic opportunities. A more project-based approach has also evolved, which addresses not only what should be done, but also who should do it. This method has led to significant advances in the processes of urban mutation and the renovation of Western cities, with many telling examples such as Bilbao, Barcelona, Genoa, and Berlin. However, due to the increasing complexity of urban issues, holistic urban strategies are still important considerations. Cities’ responsibilities are growing, as are their citizens’ expectations, and yet the means available to meet them are limited. Additionally, increased competition to attract new residents, workers, and industries, is leading cities to position themselves relative to one another. In the age of globalization cities and neighborhoods strive to personalize their identities. Perhaps Food Urbanism is a way to improve urban quality and tend toward specific identity. “Helping a community begin to understand its historic, cultural, economic, and social context is an essential foundation for developing and building a sense of place. This context includes a variety of community characteristics: population, demographic, and linguistic characteristics; physical and natural resources; cultural history; climate; customs; landscape features; design and architectural elements; local educational institutions; and temporary artistic and cultural exhibits, events, and spaces”.—The American Association of Planning, Policy Guide on Community and Regional Food Planning (2011)

Taking The Country’s Side exhibition at Archizoom EPFL, February 2020

INTRODUCTION

Most recently, Sébastien Marot curated the exhibition Taking the Country’s Side: Agriculture and Architecture for the Lisbon Architecture Triennale in fall 2019. It was reseeded at Archizoom EPFL in spring 2020 and offers “a timeline synthesizing the parallel evolutions of agriculture and architecture (and subsequently urbanism) since their common inception in the Neolithic age” along with 42 recto-verso panels presenting “significant ideas, moments and figures” addressing both realms. Additionally, four visions entitled Incorporation, Negotiation, Infiltration, and Secession illustrate scenarios of future relationships between agriculture and architecture. The exhibit makes an important contribution by assembling a holistic vision of the relationship between food and the city. The four visions imagine possible future human settlement in the wake of the last century’s intense urbanization, gradual segregation between city and country, and current environmental crisis. In the context of COVID-19, one might wonder whether anti-urban movements will gain momentum or whether the intensity of urban life will prevail. Food Urbanism clearly addresses a collective rather than an isolationist urban future and advocates for greater overlap between the realms of food growing and urban settlement, focusing energy on improving our ability to live together sustainably.

One of four visions in the exhibition Taking the Country’s Side at Archizoom EPFL illustrating the scenario entitled "Infiltration" where agricultural and horticultural practices colonize cities and their fringes.

→ Acknowledgments This book would not have been possible without the support of the Swiss National Science Foundation who financed the Food Urbanism Initiative through the National Research Program 65 New Urban Quality. The steering committee was composed of Professor Jürg Sulzer (President), Professor Hartmut Häussermann († 2011), Professor Elisabeth Merk, Professor Daniel B. Müller, Professor Werner Oechslin, Professor Karl W. Steininger, Brigit Wehrli-Schindler, Professor Kay W. Axhausen, Dr. Maria Lezzi. The program managers were Dr. Stephanie Schönholzer and Dr. Pascal Walther, and Dominik Büchel was head of knowledge transfer. We owe enormous gratitude to Annette Gref, from Birkhäuser, who saw potential in the publication early on and demonstrated patience and guidance along the process; her colleague Katharina Kulke was of great help finalizing it through oversight and close attention to detail. Many thanks are due as well to Joe Nasr of Ryerson University for his support and early insight into the book structure. Danielle Alexander’s contribution was instrumental as she provided invaluable editorial input and criticism, helped

INTRODUCTION

Collage views illustrating provocative juxtapositions

4 Typologies

In this chapter, the practices of urban agriculture are analyzed and classified in several different ways. The majority of precedents upon which the typologies are based come from Western traditions, implying a cultural bias as well as a non-exhaustive system, which could be expanded for greater inclusiveness.

“The systems of orientation which have been used vary widely through the world, changing from culture to culture, and from landscape to landscape. […] Varied as these methods are, and inexhaustible as seem to be the potential clues which a man may pick out to differentiate his world, they cast interesting side-lights on the means that we use today to locate ourselves in our own city world. For the most part these examples seem to echo, curiously enough the formal types of image elements into which we can conveniently divide the city image: path, landmark, edge, node, and district”.—Kevin Lynch, Image of the City (1960) The first two and most basic typologies concern types of sites and growers, in response to the following questions: “Where can food grow in cities?” and “Who is involved in urban food growing and what motivates them?” Sites are described via their “scale”, along with the opportunities and challenges they present and growers are characterized by their profiles and motivations. The next classification, according to production entities, addresses how growers, sites, and cultivation methods come together into socially and spatially organized entities, drawing on specific skills and tools to produce food in the city. Entities are described according to their production criteria, urban context, constraints and opportunities. The last typologies approach classification in the spirit of Kevin Lynch, from a spatial design perspective, in that they address the urban forms that food production can take on and the role these play within the urban fabric, as well as their finer-grained ingredients. Finally, the Food Urbanism Toolkit is offered as a compendium of the various typologies and other instruments that can be used in workshops and participative settings as supports or aids for site analysis, program or project discussion and evaluation.

→ Sites

A1 Urban Farmland

→ Growers Activists

Amateurs

Apprentices

Professionals

A2 Collective Housing

A5 Rooftops

A9 Waterways & Waterfronts

A11 Roads & Streets

A13 Industrial & Railway Wastelands

B1 Guerilla Gardeners

B3 Household Growers

B6 Children & Teens

B10 Employees

A3 SIngle Family Housing

A6 Parks and Gardens

A10 Forest Edges

A12 Rail Embankments

A14 Vacant Lots

B2 Land Appropriation Activists

B4 Communitiy Growers

B7 People in Training

B11 Managers of Grow Organizations

A4 Balconies

A7 Plazas & Squares

B5 Cooperative Growers Vendors

B8 People in Transition

B12 Business Owners

B9 Teachers & Trainers

B13 Entrepreneurs

A8 Sports Facilities

→ Motivations

→ Production Entities

→ Scale

Individual

Collective

Professional

C5 Public Space

C10 Restaurant Garden

Object

C11 Temporary Garden

2–50 m2

C12 Urban Farm

50–500 m2

Financial

Environmental

C1 Container Garden

Pedagogical

Esthetic

C2 Private Garden C6 Association or Co-op Garden

Personal Fulfillment

Well-being

C3 Micro Plot

C7 Therapeutic Garden

Social

Ethic

C4 Allotment Garden

C8 School Garden C13 Greenhouse Farm

500 m2–2 ha

C9 Office Garden

C14 Hydroponic/ Aquaponic Greenhouse Farm

2–10 ha

C15 Vertical Farm

10 ha+

T YPOLOGIES

→ Sites This typology identifies sites on which urban food production can occur. Site types are grouped into the following categories: currently farmed urban land, grounds of collective housing, rooftops and public spaces, natural spaces, spaces linked to infrastructure, and postindustrial or underused sites. Each site type is illustrated and described according to its characteristics and potential. Features pertinent to the urban and environmental context are identified as well as the opportunities and constraints relative to cultivation such as slope, solar orientation, presumed soil type, land ownership, and accessibility. Opportunities hold greater promise on accessible, wellexposed, unobstructed or possibly networked sites, while more challenging locations include those with compromised solar exposure, soil conditions, and accessibility or steep slopes, land ownership and planning obstacles, as well as retrofitting constraints.

A1 Urban Farmland

Cultivated plots in the city are often relics of open farmlands now surrounded by urban growth. This land can remain a significant source of food production in the heart of cities, although site availability fluctuates according to zoning and real estate value. Reduced space encourages growers to specialize in crops with higher added value. Success depends on the proximity between plots, growers, and consumers. Opportunities: The presence of farmland in the city plays an active educational and social role for consumers who may have lost touch with food-growing processes and yearn for stronger ties to their communities. These sites often become the foundation of alternative food distribution systems. Crop visibility can encourage neighborhood interest. Challenges: These sites can be vulnerable to the economic pressures of development interests, depending on the degree of protection of their agricultural status through zoning. They also face challenges accessing clean water and sunlight, compromised at times by surrounding development. Theft and other incivilities can also be a recurrent and discouraging factor to growers.

T YPOLOGIES

A2 Collective Housing

Collective housing is characterized by dispersed buildings or towers set on grassy sites. Such sites can be scattered, and are often located in the urban periphery. Lack of urban amenities and use suggest that their grounds bring little added value to their inhabitants. These spaces hold great potential, but agreements with property owners and managers are needed. Opportunities: Underused lawns can quickly be turned into a wide diversity of fertile plots. Easily reversible, these grow sites can expand and contract depending on the energy and needs of growers. As an alternative landscape management program, growers can lower or offset annual maintenance costs. Challenges: Other interests, such as sports and leisure, may compete with cultivation for the use of the same surfaces. Parts of the site may be located above underground structures such as parking structures, constraining depth of soil. Trees and buildings may cast shadows and diminish productivity. Conflicts between owners and growers can arise over maintenance standards and appearance. Conflicts among growers can also occur due to differing approaches toward cultivation, which can be mitigated by enforced guidelines. The success of projects can also create issues as plots may become over-crowded and expand into other areas in an unwanted fashion. Plot sizes often become limited to allow for more users, and many have lengthy waitlists. Finally, theft or incivilities can discourage growers.

→ Urban Forms

Productive Core

Transition Spaces

Tentacles

A12

A13

A14

A10

A12

Porous Access

Corridors

A11

A14

A10

A11

A12

A11

A12

A13

A16

A14

Financial

Social

Pedagogical

Social

Environmental

Pedagogical

Social

Pedagogical

Environmental

Aesthetic

Environmental

Aesthetic

Well-being

Aesthetic

Well-being

Aesthetic

Well-being

2–50 ha

2–50 m 2

Ethical

50–500 m 2

500 m 2 –2 ha

Table of urban forms with examples of possible associated site, grower, and entity types

2–50 m 2

Ethical

50–500 m 2

500 m 2 –2 ha

Activity Spaces

Productive Pockets

Exchange Structures

Viewpoints

A14

Social

Pedagogical

Environmental

Financial

Pedagogical

Aesthetic

Well-being

Personal Fulfillment

Well-being

Social

Ethical

Aesthetic

2–50 m 2

Object

50–500 m 2

T YPOLOGIES

2–50 m 2

Object

Pedagogical

Object

Urban Fabric

2–50 m 2

Object

Environmental

2–50 m 2

Pedagogical

Financial

Social

Aesthetic

Well-being

Personal Fulfillment

50–500 m 2

→ La Casaz, Bulle, Switzerland Gardens serving collective housing blocks have historically suffered from a lack of appropriation and low levels of security, relinquishing large patches of undefined green space to everyone and no one. In this proposal, the “micro-plot garden” is inscribed as a production entity into the new neighborhood ensuring an immediate level of appropriation, guaranteed activity, and community rooted security. Project by VWA for an invited competition mandated by the commune of Bulle and Projeco developers.

Collective gardens, berry hedges and orchards frame the neighborhood open-space

View of neighborhood green and orchard

162

View of collective gardens, neighborhood green, and orchard

CASE STUDIES

163

→ Rooftop Greenhouses of Vallon, Lausanne, Switzerland A dense urban infill proposal of diverse uses and housing nestles along the valley’s post-industrial floor. On the roofs of residential bars, shared community gardens and greenhouse production supersede solar panels and other rooftop infrastruc-

ture. Basic amenities include terraces and collective kitchens accessible to the residents. Project by NOR Architectes and landscape architect Emmanuelle Bonnemaison with design research by VWA for an exploratory study mandated by the city of Lausanne

A Professional rooftop farm Production period Production volume

1,700 m2 365 days/yr 150 g/m2/day, 250 kg/day

750 chf/m2

Approximate investment

Rooftop 1

Greenhouse accessible to public Office A2 Rooftop 2 Greenhouse Storage and processing

750 m2

800 m2

Direct vertical connection

Total annual fruit and vegetable production

91,250 kg

555 people

1,870 m2

Collective gardens

Production period

200–250 days/yr

B1 Garden 1

34 planting plots Storage, compost, and circulation

700 m2

Garden 2

3 terraces for gardeners and residents Direct vertical connection to courtyard

Garden 3

Storage, compost, and circulation 2 terraces for gardeners and residents Direct vertical connection to courtyard

37 planting plots Storage, compost, and circulation

2 terraces for gardeners and residents Direct internal vertical connection

30 planting plots

560 m2

610 m2

Total annual fruit and vegetable production

10,168 kg

62 people

Fruit and vegetable needs per person: 450 g/day, 165 kg/yr Recommendation of the World Health Organization: 400 g/day, 145 kg/yr

164

→ Organizational diagram

Harvest & cook

Professional farm

Community gardens

Recycle & compost

Public terrace & training space

Supply point for restaurants

Point of sale & food basket pick-up

Storage Terrace Storage Terrace Storage

Terrace Terrace

Office, processing and storage Greenhouse

Terrace public access Terrace Storage

Terrace Storage Terrace

Greenhouse

Storage Terrace Greenhouse – public access

Office, processing and storage

Layout of rooftop farm and collective gardens

CASE STUDIES

165

→ Earthling + Seedling, Lausanne, Switzerland Proposed for an ephemeral installation event, Lausanne Jardins, Earthling + Seedling seeks to insert a fresh landscape experience into the urban fabric by activating an under-explored place through the creation of a demonstration vegetable garden. Big bags on wooden pallets are set in three areas, to be planted and enjoyed by the church parish, neighborhood community, and visitors. Water is collected from rooftop surfaces to decrease storm run-off and to raise awareness about recuperation and energy production. By taking advantage of the level changes between cisterns, the system harnesses solar energy during the day and converts it into light at night. Project by VWA and Valéry Beaud of Impact Concept for an open competition mandated by the city of Lausanne

View of water recuperation silo and the reappropriated site

168

Project plan

→ View from the temporary rooftop garden

→ Companion planting schemes for the temporary planters

CASE STUDIES

Corn

Sunflower

Sugar cane

Zea mais

Helianthus annuus

Saccharum spontaneum

Squash

Zucchini

Spring-vetch

Cucurbita Pepo

Avena barbata

Lathyrus annus

Runner bean

Nasturtium

Campanula

Phaseolus coccineus

Tropaeolum majus

Campanula persicifolia

169

→ Vegetables

sanMarzano marzano tomato San tomato

Frisee salad

Cherry tomato

Chili pepper asparagus Asparagus

zucchini Zucchini

lettuce Lettuce

String bean ing bean

→ Structure

inerts material Inert

jars Jars

steel tank

Steel tank

plants

Plants

Pumping system and nutrients

pumping syst and nutrients

180

→ Re-marking the Land, Montevecchio, Sardinia While leading a Landworks Sardinia workshop in response to the abandoned mining site of Pireddu, Ingurtosu, the intervention arises in a large-scale, postindustrial zone set within an ancient forest grove. It is located at the physical terminus of the mining process, a seam between mineral washing and discard. Emanating from fieldwork, intended to grasp the site and its human history, a course is set making the deteriorated environmental condition visible. A long grid of plots reveals combinations of soil types, polluted and unpolluted, all are planted with edible

and indigenous plants. Three plots of nine square meters, expand the testing with “heavy-metal” collectors following a fourzone permaculture pattern. A centrally located miners’ garden is planted with a typical palette of vegetables. Seed bombs are launched into the vestiges of a sunken chemical tank adjacent to the vegetable garden. Who knows what might grow?

Project by the Group Verzone for the international student workshop organized by the Department for Architecture and Planning, College of Architecture at Algherho, University of Sassari, Sardinia

Four-square permaculture plot

CASE STUDIES

181

Imprint Concept: Cristina Woods, Craig Verzone Copy editing: Danielle Alexander Project management: Annette Gref, Katharina Kulke Production: Heike Strempel Design: Harald Pridgar Cover design: Hug & Eberlein Paper: 120g/m2 Amber Graphic Printing: Eberl & Koesel GmbH & Co. KG, Altusried-Krugzell Image Editing: bildpunkt Druckvorstufen GmbH, Berlin Image Credits: All diagrams and drawings are generated by the Food Urbanism Initiative team unless otherwise noted. All photographs are taken by Verzone Woods Architectes unless otherwise noted. p. 16 © Pascal Volpez; p. 17 © Olivier Christinat; p 18 © Martin Etienne; p. 24 courtesy of MVRDV; p 37. (all) Fondation le Corbusier; pp. 39–44 courtesy of Katrin Bohn & Andre Viljoen; pp. 140–141 © Playtime; pp. 142–143 © Playtime © Carmela Coviello; pp. 222–227: © Trevor Patt courtesy of EPF Lausanne's Digital Media Lab Library of Congress Control Number: 2021937325 Bibliographic information published by the German National Library The German National Library lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, re-use of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in other ways, and storage in databases. For any kind of use, permission of the copyright owner must be obtained. ISBN 978-3-0356-1599-9 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-0356-1567-8 © 2021 Birkhäuser Verlag GmbH, Basel P.O. Box 44, 4009 Basel, Switzerland Part of Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston 987654321 www.birkhauser.com

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