Most of our FarmHack events have been at engineering schools (mechanical, environmental, etc.). But I see a great opportunity to to team up with architects to develop designs that will benefit young and beginning farmers.
My vegetable farm started out really small and grew quickly over the course of 6 years or so. We were on rented land and challenged with making all of our infrastructure non-permanent.
There's a real need for designs for farm infrastructure that is:
- Scale-able and modular, to that the components of this year's wash station setup is still useful if the farm grows fourfold in a few years;
- Mobile, so that if farmers on leased land move their operation they can bring their infrastructure with them;
- Can integrate found or repurposed building materials (pallets? salvage lumber? greenhouse hoops?)
Anyone have connections to an architecture school that would be a good host for this?
Ideas for other goals for a FarmHack architecture session?
–Ben Shute
Hearty Roots Community Farm
I hear from an architect that you've used all the right words to entice architecture students. What about University of Buffalo? I'd definitely be interested in helping this happen.
Parsons school for design at The New School (NYC) just collaborated on a report about urban ag in the five boroughs. They may be open to collaboration. Alas I don't have any connetions, but I'm sure I'll run into someone over there eventually. I will carry this idea in my back pocket. My girlfriend recently graduated from GSAPP at Columbia University, I will also see if she has any contacts I could mine for this sort of thing.