Agri- Industrial Housing
The project explores the layering of agriculture and new residential infrastructure within an industrial site to yield a rich urban environment that mixes space for housing and leisure with urban farming, storage and distribution. New, affordable housing units are situated within elevated rigid space frames along the edges of an existing worker housing complex. The new housing is positioned at the periphery of a new layer of rooftop farms which provide unexpected views that provide residents with a zone of respite from the industrial nature of the surrounding districts. Farming and shading follows a diagonal pattern that responds to the solar orientation on site.
The housing and adjacent market adopts a utilitarian architectural language by re-purposing storage silos as spaces for commercial activity. A sinuous path interrupts the gridded layout and provides circulation that connects the project.
Through architectural intervention, the project seeks to elevate the socio-economic mobility of the residents by creating an independent agricultural industry where the workers farm their own food and sell their produce in the marketplace. The proposal for providing urban farming on the rooftops of existing housing aims to create a building type that can be later incorporated to other housing areas on site.
Exhibited at the Sharjah Architecture Triennial 2019
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