“EDU-Farming Centre Bisceglie”
'Edu-Farming Bisceglie' is a masterplan city strategy with the 'Edu-Farming Centre' as the main proposed architectural intervention in my hometown, called Bisceglie, located in the Puglia region, in the South of Italy. The scheme has been designed in response to the following research question:
'How can eco-tourism architecture tackle car dependency, increase tourism and transform Italy's urban future?'
Thus, the project aims to promote eco-tourism by using farming related activities as form of eco-tourism to decrese local co2 emissions, whilst tackling car dependency. The final aim is to preserve the neglected agricultural area with its rural community and its rural architectural sites, by empowering the local farmers and the olive oil producers.
This is achieved by making the feminist actors come together as a cooperative and be in charge of the Edu-Farming Centre. The project fosters agri-food production heritage with farming-related activities on-site by introducing hydroponic farming to teach the community sustainable farming as part of the programme, but by also providing to tourists olive oil factory, tasting area, farmers' market and community allotments to promote eco-tourism about local food heritage.
Secondly, the Edu-farming Centre aims to lower Co2 emissions primarely because Puglia is Italy's most affected region by it, and this is deteriorating the rural area. This is further achieved by teaching the local community how to up-cycle waste products and produce bio-construction, bio-plastics and biodiesel.
The bio-construction workshop teaches the local community about up-cycling olive pit ash to transform it into 'bio-olive ashcrete', a sustainable construction material invented as part of the project to lower co2 emissions using waste locally sourced materials.
The bioplastics workshop instructs about producing biodegradable bioplastic at home to decrease plastic pollution in the city.
The biodiesel factory on-site aims to diminish car dependency and car ownership privilege whilst lowering co2 emissions in the rural area by powering farming equipment with biodiesel and gradually abolishing car use to replace it with biodiesel-powered buses as a form of public transport.
