Possibilities and leanings

Urban Farmhouse Brief Briefs
Morgan Pinney
17 April 2009
Project Briefs – Draft

1. Edible Classroom
Designing an Edible Schoolyard for Brooklyn
City School + Farm
GROW vegetables
PICK fruit
COOK a meal
STROLL in the orchard
SUNBATHE in the greenhouse
FEED the fish in the breeding tanks
EAT lunch from the garden
DIG in the dirt
SPLASH in the hydroponics
SWEAT, LAUGH and LEARN
Design Brief:
Provide Pratt Extension- Teachers’ College with an Elementary School Laboratory.  In addition to classrooms and administrative facilities for the school, the project should grow enough food for at least the school community, with surplus going to the neighborhood.  Flexible and/or mobile space should be considered for such public distribution.

2.  Stoop Harvest
Condensing the Urban Food Chain; Expanding the Public Forum
Fringe Farm + Roving Market + Cooperative Kitchens
GROW vegetables
PICK fruit
COOK a meal
STROLL in the orchard
SUNBATHE in the greenhouse
CHECK-OUT the fish in the breeding tanks
SHOP for dinner
KEEP bees
SPLASH in the hydroponics
DRIVE a truck
ROAM, EAT and TALK all night.

Design Brief:
Propose an urban agriculture model for Brooklyn that incorporates all aspects of the food chain, from farm to table.  The model should create public space for the collective ‘multitude’ of Brooklyn to gather, share and debate while fulfilling a basic need.

3. Brooklyn Growing Yards
an alternative for Atlantic Yards
YMCA + Farm
GROW vegetables
PICK fruit
STROLL in the orchard
SWIM in the pool
RUN laps on the track
MEET friends
LOUNGE in the greenhouse-steam room
DO laundry
CHECK-OUT the fish pond
EAT lunch with co-workers
DIG in the dirt
SHOP for dinner
REMEDY maladies
WATCH a show
LEARN how to grow hydroponics
SWEAT, LAUGH and FALL in LOVE

Design Brief:
Propose a new-use scheme for the derelict industrial site in downtown Brooklyn originally planned for by Gehry/Ratner.  With the economic downturn and loss of private funds, public money could be used for greater public benefit on this unusual and fertile site.  The project should combine food infrastructures and extensive civic program with a specific interest in health, fitness and nutrition.

Food Operations: Toward a Utopian Realism
Morgan Pinney
17 April 2009
Abstract – Draft

This thesis proposes a ‘utopian realist’1  project that emerges from a collective concern for food- its production, distribution and social (civic) function.  In an address to the President Elect last fall, sustainable agriculture expert Fred Kirschenmann asserted “the core issue here is to shift our food policy from subsidizing commodities to supporting communities.”2  As such, this thesis argues that food has the potential to mobilize and support sustainable, diverse development within communities by establishing a measure against dilution of difference and gathering people around a common necessity.  Food architectures can activate the formation of a conscious multitude while satisfying its functional needs.

Sited in Brooklyn, NY, this thesis seeks to re-imagine how we feed the city today: not only to satisfy a basic need and civil right to sustenance but to inspire the reemergence of a diverse and engaged collective.  Approached as an infrastructural system, architecture may have the capacity to instigate the larger societal paradigm shift desired in today’s political climate; an architecture of hope can start with food.

1. See Martin, Reinhold.  On Theory: Critical of What? Toward a Utopian Realism.  Harvard Design Magazine, n.22 Spring/Summer 2005 p.104-109.
2. Barber, Dan and Fred Kirschenmann. “Menu for the Next Prez” Grist, Op-ed dialogue, http://www.grist.org/feature/2008/10/23/food_policy/  23 October 2008.

Brief mid-review spiel

My project is situated in the contemporary with an eye to the immediate future.  With the anxiety of the economic downturn and the hope embodied in Obama’s stimulus package, there is an opportunity for more publically-minded development for Brooklyn than the proposals that have accompanied the gentrification of the past decade.

Focusing on the issue of food infrastructures and the history of feeding the city, my thesis seeks to imagine a paradigm shift that could begin locally and architecturally as a new type of civic space.