The studio engages with the design of facilities supporting an Organic Farming market at Volos. It will explore the demands and challenges of a small scale complex as well as the interpretation of organic farming’s principles, ethical framework and social potential into spatial and material qualities.
Organic agriculture can be defined as:
an integrated farming system that strives for sustainability, the enhancement of soil fertility and biological diversity whilst, with rare exceptions, prohibiting synthetic pesticides, antibiotics, synthetic fertilizers, genetically modified organisms, and growth hormones.
The proposed facilities will be located at the “Palaia” district, near the port of Volos.
The new architectural complex will house:
· Offices for scientific, legislative and financial consultation.
· Rooms for meetings, seminars and lectures
· A packaging design studio
· A retail and exhibition shop for local organic products.
· A “tsipouradiko” (small raki and meze serving restaurant)
· An open farmers market
The design process will address the rural condition, our relationship to the earth and its processes, and the re-evaluation of soil’s significance as an active and vigorous body, essential for our sustainment. Agriculture in general, as a defining activity of human life, and organic farming in particular, as a non-dominating adaptation to Nature’s potential, will inform our creative explorations.
The studio aspires to a typological and formal clarity of a low-cost and easy to maintain architecture.
The adaptation to the urban setting, the functional efficiency of the facilities, their spatial qualities and their elaborated materiality are the fields of the design research along with a thoughtful consideration of the social aspects of the program.
Students must correspond fully to these challenges through their committed studio work and their design output.
http://www.arch.uth.gr/crisisconference/
http://www.rebelnet.gr/articles/view/On-the-Commons
https://barikat.gr/content/mia-syntomi-kritiki-tis-aytoorganosis-stin-ellada