By placing a community garden in this space space you can learn how to plant food and it will lead to more edible spaces on the High Street that will then lead to the re-wilding of Dudley.
A green wall facade across the passageway could create a bold landmark to attract people to the courtyard space.
PRODUCTIVE LANDSCAPE
To create a safe family friendly pedestrianised space on Dudley's high street. By changing up the landscape and introducing micro ecosystem on the high street we aim to improve the health and well-being for the planet as well as the people of Dudley.
A bowl of nature
Nature's cereal, only to be consumed by wildlife.
(*imagining*) two Christmas spirited robins joining in with the festivities of the street, singing along with your Christmas joys.
Proposed system for edible insects
The top edge on the Duncan Edwards Memorial statue in the market square. What you're looking at is fossilised sea life of a good million + years ago.
Old cinema - lack of culture - pigeon's world
Nurturing AgroEcology in Urban Life
A strategy for living alongside food production
A critical part of the climate crisis is the degradation of soil, leading to scientists predicting the UK has approximately 100 harvests left of stable crop production. As an attempt to address the problem this project will explore the possibility of integrating sustainable agriculture into an urban setting, reducing the strain on agricultural land, reducing food miles and widening city biodiversity. Taking guidance from the farming movement, ‘Agroecology,’ a climate conscious, wildlife supporting and community engaged closed loop system will be developed, combining traditional growing with technology driven techniques that will support each other to produce a diverse plate.
Dudley High Street will be the focal point, reinvented as a destination not just for the purchase and consumption of food but also its creation, driven by the needs and engagement of local people. Connecting the community to the food they eat.
ERA X Posters
The image shows what this space could look like as a productive landscape. Where all the space is used. Vertical growing space can be utilised for pollinators for heights out of human range and for fruit and herbs in the lower regions that lie within our grasp. Trees can provide shelter, pollen and fruit, as can shrubs.
Creating a stronger connecting between the current food spaces by:
- Pedestrianising the road with a grassland
- Utilising abandoned building for education centres and community farming.
Linked to the Food Hub is an education centre sharing information on edible insects and Dudley’s biodiversity. Also offers insect cooking lessons to the local community and schools.
Immersed within the grassland is areas where existing buildings can extend out onto the street to create a stronger bond with new sustainable environment.
Redesigning the Market Place with more levels of outdoor seating to create a new experience and environment of eating food on the High Street.
Gardening and insect farming spaces integrated within the buildings. By bringing all the food production onto the High Street will help reduce food waste and also offer fresh produce to the locals.
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A More-Than-Human Story of Dudley High Street
This story is a collective outcome after utilising completed Street Detectorism maps, and More-Than-Human findings to create of 'A More-Than-Human Story of Dudley High Street'.
As part of a dissertation study, this workshop invited participants to share their imagination and develop stories from the previous findings on Dudley High Street. This story creatively archives nature on Dudley High Street, with emphasis for the value of storytelling and nature at the forefront of this task.
The population of Dudley in 2021 is circ. 80,000 and including the wider borough totals 313,000.
For one person on the average diet, roughly 2.6 Hectares of farm land is required. A family of four, just over 10 Hectares. A population of 313,000 required 813,800 Hectares, the equivalent of 1,162 football fields or 707,652,174 car parking bays.
FEEDING DUDLEY REQUIRES 1,162 FOOTBALL FIELDS OF FARM LAND
Thesis Concept Image - The Farm House
Taking a fun and more literal approach for providing local food production onto the high street, I looked at layering a farm growing different fruits, vegetables and meat products into the same structure to view the absurdity of growing, processing and packaging within a single structure. Ultimately the project would be as close to being a closed system as possible, where food grown could be fed to the animals and the waste from the animals will be used as fertiliser from the food. Air flow and lighting would not only be critical for the animals, but it also allows the fruit and vegetables to grow faster and more efficiently.
The processes within the Farm House would be very energy intense due to the amount of heating, water and lighting that will be required to house the animals and grow the crops. The project utilises conventional farming methods, ploughing, seeding etc., but without the harmful pesticides that would be usually applied. The farming problem of space efficiency is partially targeted in this proposal. Per m2 in plan does contain a greater yield due to the floor layering, however per m2 of gross internal floor area the yield efficiency remains. To ultimately increase overall yield per m2 aeroponics should be applied to massively increase yield and decrease water consumption.
THESIS PROPOSAL
The redevelopment of the high street is a re-envisaged perception of what the high street is and what it will become. A future look at what the high street will become, with mixed use residential and food growth structure to create dense living accommodation and localised food growth which prevents the need to contribute to deforestation and loss of biodiversity from urbanisation.
As part of the schemes wider aims, the high street and surrounding roads will become part of a network of green corridors, where pedestrian footfall/cycling can increase and the use of polluting vehicles will be greatly reduced. The idea of greatly increasing the density of vegetation along roads and reducing lanes will not only improve the rate of absorbing carbon dioxide, but also reduce noise and reduce temperature spots. The Miyawaki planted method would be used where ever possible to create dense areas of trees and shrubs, as well as quickly create new living conditions for new biodiversity.
The primary focus for the building will be the localised food growth in the vertical farms, several floors of food growth will create a new economy centred around the high street, removing the need to import fresh food from farms from across the country or on the other side of the world. The environment within the farms will be climate controlled, allowing the farms to adjust their climate to the optimum for the specific food. The density at which food can be grown in is almost 400 times greater than conventional farming, which greatly reduces the need to create new farms.
The residential aspects pairs with the farm, in bringing a new generation of people to live above the high street. The new vision of the high street would become an attraction point for people to not only visit but to live in as well. Access to land converted from roads and paving to nature will create value and attraction to the area once again. Eventually the low income stores will transition to stores that cater to the new environment.
This project targets all the XR themes directly or indirectly.
Air & Biodiversity - Creating new and preventing the loss of woodland and habitats.
Food - Growing food local and a much greater yield.
Water - Greatly reducing the resource requirement during farming.
Materiality - Managing sustainable usage of the deconstructed buildings and sourcing of the proposed.
Community - Creating new environments for communities to interact with each other.
Nurturing AgroEcology in Urban Life
A strategy for living alongside food production
A critical part of the climate crisis is the degradation of soil, leading to scientists predicting the UK has approximately 100 harvests left of stable crop production. As an attempt to address the problem this project will explore the possibility of integrating sustainable agriculture into an urban setting, reducing the strain on agricultural land, reducing food miles and widening city biodiversity. Taking guidance from the farming movement, ‘Agroecology,’ a climate conscious, wildlife supporting and community engaged closed loop system will be developed, combining traditional growing with technology driven techniques that will support each other to produce a diverse plate.
Dudley High Street will be the focal point, reinvented as a destination not just for the purchase and consumption of food but also its creation, driven by the needs and engagement of local people. Connecting the community to the food they eat.
The yellow canary of the mines, a symbol of protection for miners spending time in highly polluted areas. The yellow lichen becomes the new symbol for Dudley, protecting inhabitants through carbon sequestration & clean air.
Together, dad feeding birds
'Quick eating pigeon'
Geological story of the Black Country
Video by Ellie Ramsey
Narrated by Graham Worton
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaxRX8-c2fU
Tiny dog yap! woof!
Spiders web
Making a new home on the high street with the perfect view
A vision for the High Street
Localising Material Accessibility
During my initial walk through the High Street of Dudley, I noticed an inevitable decline in the area. There were vacant shops, but those open had apparent facade damage. For the area to thrive, there needs to be an aesthetical uplift. Here I began to question how to make the repairs. On the one hand, one could complete a like for like repair with a deep clean to provide a new lease of life to achieve an aesthetical value. Alternatively, the repairs could be a status of where the street aims to be in the future. To achieve a statement, the implementation of repair work needs to stand out. It needs to be futuristic, a bold contrast to the existing.
At this point, I decided that after being informed of the damage the built environment has on the climate crisis, only carbon zero/ carbon sequestering materials would be present during repairs. This does not aim to destroy existing buildings but instead carefully implement repairs creating a patchwork effect across the street. This would then grow over time as more repair work is required.
Over time, the high street would transform into a zero-carbon environment. The manufacturing and growth of these materials need to be local, so consideration is vital. This provides an opportunity for the site to be a material producer itself.
This visual represents the vision for the thesis, buildings covered in lichens, air purifying plants and community activities held on the Highstreet. This visual focuses in on the proposed site for the building and shows expression of a raised new build component on site as well as a full and wild landscaping plan.
Lichen as bioindicators
Lichen Vs Carbon. These concept models look to document both the current state of Dudley Highstreet and the vision looking towards the future within this thesis project.
The lichen covered model looks towards a future in Dudley that is rich in texture, colour, nature and oxygen. Natural materials promote natural growth, and textures such as rough sawn timber and stone are the prefect hosts for lichen. All new buildings in Dudley would benefit massively from following a fabric first approach and adopt the use of sustainable and recycled building materials along with systems that use minimal energy.
The lichen model represents a vision for this thesis, buildings that are covered in natural materials and lichens that help sequester carbon and promote a healthier Highstreet. Suggestions of raised buildings also proposes less disruption to the ground and natural landscape, giving plants and animals the opportunity to thrive in an otherwise hostile concrete environment. Raised buildings also look towards a future planet with rising sea levels, future factors that will drastically affect the way we carry out daily lives and futureproofing all buildings for generations to come.
This second model uses the Shou Sugi Ban method of charring timber to waterproof it. In this case however it represents the embodied carbon and pollution within the highstreet as it exists now. The simplicity and repetition is also used to symbolise the plain nature of the highstreet with only a few materials exhibited, mainly brick & concrete. Once burnt the timber forms were brushed with wire wool to reveal the natural grain of the wood, a visual representation of degradation of layers of buildings that are built poorly or not constructed to last longer than a generation.
Pile of bird seed on pavement makes me smile as I know there are signs near here saying don't feed the birds
Dudley High Street is not only inhabited by human beings, but also by animals. Looking back on the formation of most cities, we can see the common attraction of urban landscapes to humans and and wild animals. I used recycled corrugated paper to make this creative painting. It shows the causal relationship between climate change and animals’ loss of habitat and forced into urban life when human beings are developing cities. It highlights the importance of protecting the environment while developing Dudley High Street in the future.
friendly surveillance of spiders in the top right corner of the lab - be nice!