Eco Warriors [Edible to Productive landscapes]

The studio pivots on the link between city, food and productive landscapes. Today, as large numbers of people live in cities depending on the supply of food and other resources from far away areas, the link is invariably extensive and invisible. Further, the needs and lifestyles of our growing cities put enormous stress on environmental systems and natural cycles and these challenges are accelerated with climate change. There has been a growing interest today in this topic in different cities and studios across the world on how to re-think urban areas from the lens of ecology and how to materialise ideas into practical application. The studio ECO WARRIORS focuses on speculative design proposals advocating potential synergies between productive landscapes and urban development. In this unit, students will conceive and generate innovative ideas of productive public realm centred around the themes of improved agricultural productivity, enhancement of biodiversity, and ecologically sensitive urban designs. The central idea is to create a resilient infrastructure through the intensification of native landscapes and that will incorporate productive spaces in various scales across the city.