Venice (Haodong) Chen
Fresh Food Corridor——From Interstitial spaces to Urban Food Production Corridors
Environmental Design
2021
An architectural project seeking the possibility to reutilize and transform the interstitial spaces along with civic infrastructure into the urban food production realm, leading the fight against household food insecurity due to the outrageous expansion of cities during urbanization.
“There are plenty of empty spaces seemingly impossible to be filled in or hidden beneath the urban forest. While cities have been outrageously expanding under the trend of urbanization, challenges from climate change, the shortage of land, and other eco-threats are coming hard on the heels. Under such a background and to tackle household food insecurity in the City of Toronto, this project explores the possibilities of reutilizing interstitial or marginal spaces in alignment with civic infrastructure. By taking a case study at the north end of Glencairn Station in the north of Toronto, this project will become a new prototype of sustainable transformation of an underutilized land to a prolific and profitable multi-purpose urban agriculture centre. Various programs reactivate such space, including vertical agriculture, warehousing and shipping, community and catering service, and public parkettes. At the same time, by redeveloping such underused land into a fully accessible and welcoming environment, the surrounding neighbourhoods will be revitalized as well. Eventually, this project will ignite a new food production and distribution network in the city.”