Agricultural Transparency: Reconnecting Urban Centres With Food Production

Abstract

In North America, industrial agriculture has led to cheap abundant food while separating direct links between the city and countryside. This thesis attempts to use architecture to reconnect people in Manhattan, New York City, with food production and serve as a model for sustainability. The thesis analyzes Manhattan’s food network, and seeks a site which has the potential for several factors: site accessibility, renewable resources, solar exposure, and integration into the community. These factors serve as the basis in which to build a hybrid prototype that is able to expose people to the process of food production through a combination of traditional outdoor farming methods and indoor hydroponics in the form of a vertical farm. Farmers and customers can be seen together as one entity instead of two disconnected dependencies. The reintegration of food production into the city can be seen as a re-alliance of the country and the city.