Critical Care: Farming and Building as if the Earth Mattered

Abstract

Such is the critical condition of our earth that reuniting building and farming is an urgently needed form of care for planetary well-being and survival. Lessons from utopias, communes, and nature are used in this thesis to reimagine modern architecture and industrial agriculture seeking to enhance human presence in agricultural landscapes, foster biodiversity and connection to the fertility of our earth.

Standards in commercial greenhouse structures and formations are reassembled into an agro-architectural ecology tested in the context of Southern Ontario, Canada where care is envisioned with three aspects: “care about” diet, food, and planetary health motivated by the events of the COVID-19 pandemic; “care for” knowledge and resources of existing local farming communities; and “care with” the next generation of the earth’s stewards. Describing building and farming as interdependent terrestrial challenges, care of the earth is intrinsically tied to the care of people it sustains.