On Farming: Bracket 1, edited by Mason White and Maya Przybylski (available on amazon USA
Publisher Actar writes: Bracket is a new book series structured around an open call for entries that highlights emerging critical issues at the juncture of architecture, environment, and digital culture. It is a collaboration between InfraNet Lab and Archinect. Conceived as an almanac, the series looks at emerging thematics in our global age that are shaping the built environment in radically significant, yet often unexpected ways. [on farming] looks at the capacity for architecture to address ideas and issues of productive landscapes and urbanisms. Once merely understood in terms of agriculture, today information, energy, labour, and landscape, among others, can be farmed. Farming harnesses the efficiency of collectivity and community and represents the local gesture, the productive landscape, and the alternative economy. The processes of farming are mutable, parametric, and efficient. Farming is the modification of infrastructure, urbanisms, architectures, and landscapes toward a privileging of production.
Taryn Simon, Forensic Anthropology Research Facility, Decomposing Corpse University of Tennessee Knoxville, Tennessee, 2006
[bracket] is a collection of essays selected following an open call for entries. The editors could have made a magazine out of the material gathered, like Monu or Volume do, but they chose to publish a thick and beautifully designed (bravo Thumb!) book instead. Except that they call it an ‘almanac’ because the fundamental role of an almanac is to forecast, to provide useful insights about the near future. And that’s what Bracket 1 is attempting to do with texts that range from thoughtful observations about everyday issues to presentations of speculative architecture or art projects. The term “almanac” is also perfectly adequate to the focus of this first issue of Bracket: farming. But farming here takes a much broader sense than the cultivation of animals, plants, and other life forms. Farming nowadays goes beyond agriculture. Think of fish farms, server farms, or even the body farm.
But no matter the name you give to this publication, it remains a wonderful source of discoveries. Flipping through the book, i learnt about Farm-to-Table (FTT), a postal service launched in 1914 to ship farm produce directly from rural producers to urban consumers; i found out that the first bodies that arrived at the body farm back in 1981 are still being studied today; read why vertical farms in Las Vegas might make sense after all and how the Hukou system in China classified citizens as either rural or urban and implemented strict measures to deter rural citizens from acquiring urban status.
Some of the essays particularly stand out. Stephen Becker and Rob Holmes wrote a fascinating text about how a technique called Fog Farming could solve the water supply issue in Luanda, Angola, the fastest growing city in the world.
PolySpecies Park
Another essay, by Edward Dodington, explains that the meat produced through tissue engineering is economically, ethically and ecologically desirable but also that ‘meat on demand’ is, paradoxically, Ford’s dream applied to farming. He goes on to propose plans for the PolySpecies Park, an animal-responsive park that is part farm, part tissue engineering factory, part eco-resort, and part research facility.
Bracket 1 [on farming] has plenty of illustrations, renderings, and even the odd photo series. Your Town Tomorrow, Detroit 2001-2011 is one of them. In this work, Corine Vermeulen postulates that Detroit is a city of the future, a fertile ground for new topographies and ways of urban life.
Corine Vermeulen, Destine, Rico, Jesse, Hershey, 2009
Corine Vermeulen, View from pedestrian bridge, Cochrane Street, Detroit
Corine Vermeulen, Soul Saving Holy Church, 2008
Corine Vermeulen, Detroit’s Old train station, Dalzelle Street
Bracket 1 [on farming] makes for a very satisfying read. The quality and variety of perspectives on the subject of farming is exceptional. I’m looking forward to seeing what Bracket explores in its upcoming publications.
Views inside the book:
Image on the homepage: David/ Okpullo-Nuni, 2010 from the series Your Town Tomorrow, Detroit 2001-2011 by Corine Vermeulen