A garden floats on the surface of a fish tank and uses fish waste as a natural fertiliser for the plants. The innovative arrangement of the fish tank means it is a natural filtration system as the garden absorbs nitrate pollutants in the water, meaning the tank’s water does not require changing. There is a sustainable balance and relationship between the garden, fish and the water tank that involves a cycle that feeds into each other; a recycling principle. It is referenced as a microcosm for the human concern of waste management and maintaining freshwater in a domestic scale. This principle is something I would like to adopt in my pop-up design, combining a system like this in a finite space.
The proposed hydroponic vertical farm uses the same concept as the floating garden on a larger scale. The water is sourced from a rainwater collection tank, and the nutrients are gathered from the waste of the aquaponics room. This system solidifies the idea of using fish water and rainwater for my hydroponic pop-up to act as a natural filtration system so it can sustain itself.
This farmshop was a temporary space, holding a coffee shop as well as an aquaponic and hydroponic farm, which has closed down in 2011. It was an experimenting space for avid farmers and hobbyists to congregate and discuss about growing. This temporary project provided a space for growing, which relates to my pop-up’s purpose, and shows aquaponics and hydroponics can go hand in hand. The idea of growing is an activity that brings people together and creates a series of conversation in the act of doing and caring for food cultivation which would be beneficial for the community of Deptford.
The growing pavilion was a temporary pop-up structure having panels grown from mushroom mycelium supported by a timber frame. The mycelium is rooted in the panels, providing strength and is covered in a bio-based coating. The floors are made from a type of reed, and the interior and exterior benches from agricultural waste. The mushrooms growing in the panels were harvested daily in front of an audience and then cooked at a food truck nearby. The act of having a growing media, outside acting as a barrier between the interior and exterior, and it being a controlled growing, inspires me with my project of having a control with growing with the plant produce between some sort of netting structure. The idea of manipulating the balance of growth with a netting structure, so the plants can grow in between, or around is something to consider. Also the produce being harvested in front of an audience allows the pop-up to become a growing installation and contributes itself to the food cycle.
This pavilion is for a net artist Toshiko Horiuchi Macadam and it contains a hand knitted net by the artist himself. It is designed for children to crawl in, explore, roll around and jump onto the net. The intention was to design a space as soft as the woods surrounding the pavilion so that the boundary between outside and inside disappears. The space attracts people like a campfire where the children play in the net like fire and parent site around like laying wood. This idea has inspired me to use netting in tension for my pop-up, as it is partially transparent, allowing the boundary of inside and out to be blurred, and creates a supportive structure for the hydroponic plants to grow on and around. It also is reminiscent of food packaging, and nods to the containment of food even at the early stage of growing.
The cultivator is the name for my pop-up as I was heavily inspired by the piece of agricultural equipment used for secondary tillage. It refers to the name of the teeths that pierce the soil and drag through it linearly. It also refers to the machine that uses a rotary motion of disks to achieve the same result. The pop-up takes a form of a circle, a simple shape however it symbolises the rotatary shape or motion of the equipment and the structural columns represent the teeth.
The Tardis interior was made to be more organic because it was said the tardis was grown rather than constructed. The same principle with the cultivation of food for my pop-up. I decided to create structural columns surrounding my pop-up as the hydroponic towers were not structurally sound to support the pop-up by itself. These columns were to mimick the teeth of the cultivator machine however I created a more organic form to fit with the organic growing purpose of my pop-up, which reminded me of the organic shape of the columns of the tardis. There is a central stem and core associated with a plant or vegetable, and this is a similar interior structure to my pop-up with a central place for the seeds, harvesting and water pump tank.
References
Fairs, M. (2009) Floating Garden by Benjamin Graindorge, Dezeen. Dezeen. Available at: https://www.dezeen.com/2009/06/24/floating-garden-by-benjamin-graindorge/ (Accessed: March 16, 2023).
Gibson, E. (2017) Sasaki designs Hydroponic Vertical Farm for Shanghai, Dezeen. Dezeen. Available at: https://www.dezeen.com/2017/04/26/sasaki-architecture-hydroponic-vertical-farm-sunqiao-urban-agricultural-district-shanghai-china/ (Accessed: March 16, 2023).
Hawkins, D. (2011) Farm: Shop – east london’s radical experiment in food growing and Community Building, The Ecologist. Available at: https://theecologist.org/2011/jan/14/farm-shop-east-londons-radical-experiment-food-growing-and-community-building (Accessed: March 16, 2023).
Pownall, A. (2019) Pavilion grown from mycelium acts as pop-up performance space, Dezeen. Available at: https://www.dezeen.com/2019/10/29/growing-pavilion-mycelium-dutch-design-week/ (Accessed: March 16, 2023).
Basulto, D. (2009) Woods of Net / Tezuka Architects, ArchDaily. ArchDaily. Available at: https://www.archdaily.com/39223/woods-of-net-tezuka-architects (Accessed: March 16, 2023).
The Doctor Who Site (no date) Series one TARDIS interior, The Doctor Who Site Series One TARDIS Interior. Available at: https://thedoctorwhosite.co.uk/tardis/interior/series-1-interior/ (Accessed: March 16, 2023).