Urban Agricultural Processing

This hybrid design fuses the programmatic elements of an agricultural processing plant with the eclectic or aesthetic trappings of a vertical farm. I was interested in exploring the infrastructure necessary to transform vertical farming and urban crop cultivation from theoretical to practical. A vast amount of resources would be required to deal with issues of harvesting, cleaning, pruning, packing, storage, shipping among many others. A functioning network of these various interdependent services would be critical to the success of any locally-sourced farming initiatives and one would expect these services to operate with an understanding and respect for sustainable practices. The design is predicated on the evolution of a cluster study, which looked at how tracking both the rise and movement of point clusters can help establish a natural hierarchy within a system. A simple voronoi pattern was developed and deployed in a vertical fashion to suit the demands of a typical urban infrastructure project footprint. The final system provided the flexibility necessary to accommodate the dual programmatic requirements of urban processing plant as well as an educational center that could aesthetically telegraph its association with vertical farming. Ample public access is intended to further balance this distinction.