“How to Assemble Our Own Living Structures”

How we grow, eat and access food is central to the social + environmental challenges impacting public health, climate change, energy and ecosystems today. We partnered with the Campus Farm (a student-driven lab for sustainable food systems work whose principles include growing food for students by students, carbon-neutrality, and food justice) to design a gathering structure at Matthaei Botanical Gardens that will support the various communities and activities that coexist on the farm’s land. - Assembling Community: Inspired by co-designed + co-built architectures situated in grassroots, community-organized sites, we designed an architecture that is accessible build-wise to those within and beyond the architecture community. Adopting a co-operative working method, we sought to learn from each other and the people stewarding land towards food justice, and built our own studio community through coexistence, collaboration and co-production. - Assembling Living Structures: Concerned with the material and social orchestration of buildings and environments – and the humans and non-humans that buildings coexist with and support – how we grow, access and enjoy architecture was evaluated in parallel to how we grow, access, eat and gather around food at the Campus Farm. We considered the creatures that our co-designed project will impact throughout the course - from sourcing to construction to the completed building’s lifetime impact. - Assembling Assemblies: We evaluated the material, environmental and cultural contexts of the Campus Farm and our building assemblies to design a pavilion capable of responding to issues that shape spatial and food-related environmental and social challenges.