Value Farm
Value Farm integrates urban transformation, architecture and productive landscape, exploring community building through farming in the city.
A 2,100m2 open area of Shekou’s Former Guangdong Glass Factory is transformed into an expansive architecture of edible plants as part of Ole Bouman’s Value Factory for the Shenzhen Hong Kong Bi-city Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture (UABB). Responding to Shekou’s post-industrial regeneration dubbed ‘Shekou Relaunch’, an area that is itself undergoing radical transformation, Value Farm revalorizes the obsolete industrial site with an event-architecture of urban agriculture, while providing it with a permanent regenerative landscape infrastructure.
The project’s design inspiration is twofold. The first comes from rooftop farms in Hong Kong’s dense urbanity, as part of the emerging trend of urban farming found in other large cities like New York, Chicago, London and Tokyo that reconnect city dwellers to small-scale, hands-on experience of growing crops offering a more secure, accessible food supply as well as pointing to an attitude, lifestyle change. Second is the lively urban vernacular of Hong Kong’s Central district, in particular the 170 year-old Graham Street wet market precinct and its low-rise fabric that embodied its fine-grain metamorphosis. Facing wholesale redevelopment, Value Farm speculates retroactively turning rooftops of an entire demolished wet market block into farming terrain. Nature is excavated anew from Hong Kong’s urban past; rooftop configurations are taken as “new ground” to cultivate a viable post-urban future.
The concept is transplanted full-scale onto the glass factory premises as “test ground”. Brick enclosures at different heights reference Central’s Graham Street precinct’s demolished rooftop configurations, forming compressed “rooftop plots” with varying soil depths suitable for a variety of crops. Original stair cores are converted into brick platforms and open pavilions to accommodate future activities. A pond was dug to collect the site’s natural underground water source and fed via an integrated sprinkler system for irrigation, while a generous nursery as well as exhibition facilities and a projection room for showing related short videos are also added.
Instead of treating “landscape” as a passive, detached ‘view of the land’, Value Farm emphasizes productive transformation. The site’s existing qualities are revealed, features such as old walls are redeemed and given new life. Trees are kept to reduce environmental impact and became rejuvenated. Resource such as the natural underground water is revived; large rocks uncovered during excavation are recycled to decorate the pond. A circular bench made from reusable materials envelops a large tree to provide habitable shade in summer to complement the productive farming plots. Resonating with the Value Factory’s new production of ‘culture’ within the factory buildings, Value Farm reworks the site to produce “nature”, using farming to revive the land’s fecundity.
Value farm’s design is multi-layered. The composition of farming plots, platforms and pavilions creates an undulating hard and soft edible landscape, whose differing depths are matched with corresponding crop types. A Hong Kong-inspired mixed, high-density planting considers growing or harvesting cycles, while the choice of crops lie in their botanical or nutritional significance as well as consideration of gardening and visual aesthetics.
For example, the crop covering the largest area is ‘winter wheat’. As the iconic cereal crop, wheat was once the mainstay in Southern China, although it is now much less cultivated after rice became the dominant staple. Besides recalling ancient agricultural memories of place, a side-product, the wheatgrass juice is an increasingly popular health drink that has emerged to satisfy the needs of contemporary city dwellers due to its perceived cleansing benefits. Flaxseed, as the second most abundantly grown crop, is similarly multi-functional and steeped in history. Flax seeds and its extracted oil are used for various culinary and medicinal purposes, while its refined blue blossom provide graceful contrast to the surrounding swathes of green.
Red oak leaf, green oak leaf, lolla rossa, endive and radicchio are chosen as an experiment to grow predominantly imported lettuces locally, as well as for their bright colours. Moreover, as readily edible without cooking, these salad greens are used to demonstrate the farm-to-table idea of healthy eating, allowing urbanites to appreciate afresh the direct relationship between land, food and people. Likewise, the concentrated planting of the many-hued Swiss chard, zucchini, bell pepper and tomato provide colour and volume while adding to the overall visual vibrancy. Then there are particular versions of carrot, beetroot and radish that are not the most familiar in Shenzhen to cover the typical root crops. Finally a range of common cultivars including cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli and Chinese kale, act as botanical and visual complements to enrich the overall landscape layering.
Recycling a disused factory for agriculture in Shenzhen, Value Farm is designed as a hybrid ensemble of farm, fabricated urban ruins and public garden. Besides conceptual inspiration, Hong Kong seeds and workforce are injected to cultivate refreshing nourishment for all, producing green, food, smell and taste in an engaging and most unexpected way. Apart from creating and maintaining the farm, Value Farm also curated the highly popular Sowing, Tasting and Market Festivals, engaging international curators, architects and design professionals while garnering abundant support and enthusiasm from local citizens, media and community groups.
As a transformative architecture-landscape envisioning responsible eco-revitalization, Value Farm cultivates post-industrial value beyond the biennale. As a permanent conversion, the project received the UABB Academic Committee Award. “The Value Farm is an organic sight of the Biennale, but there is continuity for the farm after the Biennale ends…” said Zhu Rongyuan, deputy director of the China Academy of Urban Planning & Design, Shenzhen. “It is a prime example of how urban green environment can be achieved.” Terence Riley, former MOMA curator and UABB 2011 lead curator noted that Value Farm invokes the “important symbolism of shared ecology”.
