Jay Zhang
ARCH-4980.4 | Ted Ngai, Lecturer
RURAL REVOLUTION
Recontextualizing the Agricultural Domain
JAY ZHANG
The project aims to empower the individual by giving them the ability to be self sustaining and independent using readily available commercial materials and integration of several modern technologies. Hanoi, capital city of Vietnam, is a hastily growing city aimed at modernizing and matching economies of 1st world countries at the expense of agriculturally independent livelihoods. With the current population decreasing in rural areas and increasing in urban areas in Hanoi, by 2020 80% of the cities’ population will be located in urban centers, increasing the demand for food with the decrease of the city’s human resources to produce the food on its own. Reappropriation of farmlands, external trade efforts, and inflation of the tourism sector of the economy all aim to try and accommodate a growing city’s needs but neglect to accommodate the individuals involved.
Using Permacultural design principles, Aeroponic technology, Plant tropic Behaviors, Optics, Interstitial spaces, agriculturally trained population, and temporal conditions, Rural Revolution redefines the relationship of Agriculture, Architecture, and Urban Environments through the active participation of the individual. Sunlight, water, Ventilation, Soil medium, and gravity are vital resources to the growth of any plant organism. It is the goal of this thesis to develop an infrastructure to sustain the life of plants that will re contextualize the agricultural infrastructure into individualize urban environment.