UNBUILT ARCHITECTURES 02

Center for Urban Agriculture (CUA)

By Mithun

Center for Urban Architecture was an unbuilt project for vertical agriculture in Downtown Seattle, USA. It won top honors at the Cascadia chapter of the Green Building Council’s Living Building Challenge. The idea of this building is focused on food, water, and energy design. The characteristic of this building that I admire is that it produces its own energy, collects and recycles its own water. Nevertheless, it also has fields for growing vegetables and grains, greenhouse, and rooftop gardens. This packs over an acre of farm and forest land into an urban built environment.

The building would provide of 318 small studios, 1-and 2-bedroom affordable apartments. The entry level would feature a café serving organic foods grown on site. This building would be well defined as “living building” as “it is possible to create a structure that functions like a living organism – able to survive using only the natural environment around it”.

Although it has not been built in the real world yet, I believe that these ideas and imaginative concepts can be very well built in the CryEngine environment. It would be very interesting if this building was embraced with the surrounding natural environment. In terms of fabrication, it could be very challenging as the building consists of both agricultural features and its unique structural features. As the collaborative project, I am sure that this building would not beyond our ability as our team will gather our knowledge and experience to the project.

Reference

Mithun 2009, Center for Urban Agriculture, accessed on 14 March 2009, http://mithun.com/projects/project_detail/center_for_urban_agriculture/.