My design for the Urban Agricultural Institute of Chicago deploys an artificial landscape over an infrastructural skin system to create a unique urban center where the community can come together, grow, process, distribute, and share food. The skin system uses a vertical steel infrastructure where the folding of the artificial landscape interacts to create growing areas. These growing areas receive exterior natural light while also supporting an interior gardening infrastructural system. The creation of an artificial ground level beneath which lies the seed vault also provides a system which is used to guide the circulation of visitors. Community members garden, harvest, and process food on the site. The food is then used at three areas on site: donated to the community at the food bank, used as ingredients at the culinary institute, or sold at the community farmer’s market. The language of the artificial landscape and its interaction with the infrastructural skin system promotes community and shared investment in a local urban agricultural system.
