We've Done This Already... Let's Do It Again!

The Architects Farm, by Meredith Tenhoor, briefly references the history of architecture in agriculture. As noted in the text, the engagement is largely undocumented. Architects have in fact toiled with the concept of implementing restructured agricultural practices to improve efficiency, quality, and the overall special quality of the urban environment for hundreds of years. Sustainability is synonymous with architecture today as we face population challenges, environmental concerns, and a looming energy crisis but the high tech vertical agricultural machine envisioned by today’s architects is just another iteration of an idea that has been visited over and over again. My impression is that we will continue to conceptualize and indefinitely redesign until we define humanities relationship to nature, or there is of course the potential that nature rejects human civilization… The self defeating attempt to define the urban and rural, and their relationship to each other will continue until we perceive them both as human civilization, contrasted only by nature. They were born together as explained in Jane Jacob’s, Economy of Cities, and they are growing less indistinguishable by our modern cultural perceptions. The machine dominates the rural environment and the virtual world has brought the modern world into the homes of the countryside. The so-called urban environment must begin to sustain itself as we expect a global population of 9 billion by 2050 of which 80% is projected to live in cities and ‘urban’ areas. Cities will have to grow food further blurring the rural/urban contrast. In the sixties and seventies, Greek architect Constantinos Doxiadus developed a plan to restructure the production of food between two “essential” distinctions: traditional farming and mechanized farming would feed the country. Tenhoor describes the flaw in his thinking simply, “Doxiadis didn’t understand that the two methods were irreconcilable [in function](178).” There is no delineation between rural and urban, together they are called human civilization; the contrast exists between civilization and nature. The consequences of failing to understand that relationship has been under consideration of architects too; “One thing is certain. Mechanism comes to a halt before living substance. A new outlook must prevail if nature is to be mastered rather than degraded (177).” -Siegfried Giedion, architectural historian. If by mastered, he means completely understood, I completely agree.