How does a building work when it’s put together by locals, and how does a community leverage its current infrastructure and evolve it to meet their future wishes?
Our team recently explored these questions with growers from Black Rootz and Wolves Lane Consortium, at their Pasteur Gardens growing site in Enfield.
Working with architects Material Cultures, the first stage of the project was to provide a flexible outdoor area that could be used by the growers – ultimately offering a simple, dignified and bold space that could be used for workshops, material handling and prep during the growing seasons, as well as a shelter for erecting and building components for the Seed Store building.
Our team had one primary question to answer: which elements can be handled with minimal plant and mechanical intervention, and enable a smart transformation of two storage containers and the grey space between them?
The second stage of this project was part of a larger study, where different structural typologies were being investigated to determine a framing typology which could be relatively site agnostic, and erected by either the professional, or amateur self-builder—whether a house, an agricultural building, or a space for people who work together. Permanent or meanwhile.
Over summer 2024, a series of workshops were hosted on site explored the use of experimental materials made from agricultural by-products. Using plant and earth-based materials, and studies into multiple wind-resistant framing typologies, the final design was an elegant timber frame with rubble-trench foundations, walls of light earth and clad with reed.
