Urban Farm & Health Rehabilitation Kitchen

In term one, I started by looking into the rehabilitative qualities of being outdoors around a variety of fauna. Multiple studies prove that being in a garden and doing certain activities improves health, reduces stress and anxiety. Gardening itself is a great low-impact activity that can get most age groups involved and working together.

The age demographic in Weston-super-Mare is quite mixed, I decided this would be a great program for the site. With global temperatures rising, it is more important to think about what you are putting on your plate. Food transportation within, to and around the UK produces 19 million tonnes of CO2 annually, which is the equivalent to 5.5 million typical cars. Urban farming is an increasingly popular way of locally sourcing food.

More people are eating a plant based diet and learning nutritional science. Urban farming has rehabilitative properties to the environment and community. I wanted to create an Urban Farming space in the town of Weston-super-Mare, that will have a kitchen for cooking classes and a cafeteria for feeding the homeless. The kitchen uses vegetables and greens grown in the garden and urban farm. I wanted to create a productive space as well as educate users on the importance of nutritional and sustainable eating.

The site had an existing building and I used that as the main structure of my building. I looked into how to most efficiently retrofit the building and make the functions low-tech while still providing all the comfort requirements for each of the spaces within. My main design ethos was to provide a space with as much greenery in and around as possible, reducing the carbon footprint of the created space as well as the town as a whole.