While words like green and sustainable have become some of the most powerful marketing tools, I see the potential of a project with similar themes to empower communities, giving ordinary people the opportunity to own the means of production and improve their quality of living.
My house began my first urban garden prototype. It is located on the intersection of N. Pennsylvania Ave. (a 5 lane N/S road) and Oakland Hwy (a 4 lane one way). In May of 2009 I began work on a vegetable garden and rainwater collection system in the front yard. During the summer of 2009 the garden was open to the public to harvest. The produce made considerable impact on the tables of neighbors on both sides of my house along with many others in the area. All the while we were still able to harvest plenty for the 4 residents at my house. For the spring of 2010 the I’ve increased the bed area in my yard by 50% and also put in the same 50% more in my neighbors front yard to the east, effectively doubling the garden area. The focus of this project however is on the water.
The key to being able to grow high yield produce is water. The project is focused on developing a modular 500gallon system, comprised of a collection tank and a water tower for gravity fed irrigation. The systems are designed around the International Bulk Containers (IBCs). IBCs are a stackable industry standard container for fluid transport in the 200-400 gallon range, and are often still useful for our purposes after their industrial life.
The water distribution system will be designed using the open-source hardware platform Arduino.
The project bridges art, architecture, and performance, promoting a way of being that is built on a quality of life without victims. Water is free, since it falls from the sky. It is my greatest ambition to be able to design an open source system capable of harnessing a free resource empowering a community with the means to produce one of the most necessary components of life, food.
Special Thanks: to collaborator Samuel Rose of the Forward Foundation.
This project was made possible in part by the Puffin Foundation.
