A scheme for living and resource production.
This housing project incorporates spaces for individual households’ and shared communities’ horticulture. In this scheme, food growing is integrated into the lifestyles of the residents through stacked allotments easily accessible from each flat’s kitchen. This close living-growing connection, and the visual significance of the allotments, means that food growing becomes an every-day part of the residents lives rather than an occasional past time.
Plants and food growing are offered as a solution to many of the problems of housing design, both new and old. Allotments create private outdoor space for residents living in flats in densely-populated South Manchester, as well as providing a source of food that is cheap, self-sustaining, and with a low carbon footprint. Greenwalls provide natural insulation and protection from noise and air pollution. Spaces for shared growing fosters community. The green and biodiverse landscape, with plenty of shared community space and interactions, creates answers to contemporary crises of mental health, loneliness, climate change, and food insecurity.
