MetaboliCity

urban growers

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Ilyanna Kerr Geodesic Greenhouse/polytunnel

I recently built a 6m in diameter and 3m high geodesic greenhouse in the center of my allotment using standard sized treated wood, a few nuts and bolts and polythene sheeting.

I am currently designing an instruction manual for the dome and will post it up once it is completed.

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Added by Ilyanna Kerr on February 28, 2010 at 12:00am — No Comments

Rachel Wingfield Skills to Grow

Whilst researching on MetaboliCity we found ourselves questioning and rethinking our urban workforce and especially the new modes of work created from urban greening and farming. There are some great apprentice schemes and opportunities to setup social enterprises that take on council contracts to manage local green spaces.

There is a really good report on the CABE website about their Skills to Grow strategy that has identified apprenticeships as an important route into green space care… Continue

Added by Rachel Wingfield on February 26, 2010 at 3:30pm — No Comments

Rachel Wingfield City University

We are planning our first workshop with City University London tomorrow, who will be using some of the MetaboliCity methods and tools to start a growing site on campus in a disused courtyard sandwiched between buildings.


We are really excited about… Continue

Added by Rachel Wingfield on February 21, 2010 at 11:27pm — 1 Comment

Hannah Jones The Ministry of Food Exhibition

The Ministry of Food Exhibition will take place at the Imperial War Museum from February 12th 2010 until January 2011. The radio four Today programme have a short slide show that presents the 'Dig for Victory' campaign that took place at the time of the second world war.

http://news.bbc.co.uk./today/hi/today/newsid_8511000/8511309.stm… Continue

Added by Hannah Jones on February 12, 2010 at 12:06pm — No Comments

Rachel Wingfield Crop to Shop: Supermarket Secrets

Last night we watched a documentary where Jimmy Doherty (Britain's famous TV presenting pig farmer) explores the global logistics that bring fresh food from around the world to a shop near you, and uncovers the science that keeps food fresh for weeks. Great visuals to show food's global superhighways.. from small low-tech farms in Ghana to our supermarket shelves and huge water intensive pot… Continue

Added by Rachel Wingfield on February 4, 2010 at 5:00pm — 1 Comment

camalo Permaculture - Farms for the Future

A short film I just watched about a woman trying to determine the direction she should take the farm she will inherit from her father. Essentially, after being introduced to permaculture by other farmers who decided that this was for them the most effective (in terms of labor and land) practice, she ponders whether gardening, rather than farming is the most sensible way forward. http://www.viddler.com/explore/PermaScience/videos/4/ Continue

Added by camalo on February 3, 2010 at 12:14pm — No Comments

camalo Large scale Vertical Farming

Some fodder for debate on shifting farming to large scale indoor spaces in response to land depletion from traditional agriculture: http://www.verticalfarm.com Continue

Added by camalo on February 2, 2010 at 5:15pm — No Comments

camalo FutureFarmers

Very nice design studio based in San Francisco, related to some of our Berlin growers (Henrik Lebuhn and Megan Saperstein) who have kept an urban growing allotment for many years: http://www.futurefarmers.com/ Continue

Added by camalo on January 31, 2010 at 9:26pm — No Comments

camalo ACGA

The site for the American Community Gardening Association: http://www.communitygarden.org/ outlines some key benefits of community gardens, especially in urban locations: * Improves the quality of life for people in the garden * Provides a catalyst for neighborhood and community development * Stimulates Social Interaction * Encourages Self-Reliance * Beautifies Neighborhoods * Produces Nutritious Food * Reduces Family Food Budgets * Conserves Resour… Continue

Added by camalo on January 25, 2010 at 11:20pm — No Comments

camalo Who Will Grow Your Food?

Nina Fallenbaum, who writes a food column for Hyphen Magazine sent me the article "Who Will Grow Your Food? Part I: The Coming Demographic Crisis in Agriculture" by Sharon Astyk posted on scienceblogs.com: http://scienceblogs.com/casaubonsbook/2010/01/who_will_grow_your_food_part_i.php Continue

Added by camalo on January 24, 2010 at 12:03am — No Comments

camalo Urban Squat Farming

Last year KPFA radio station broadcasted a piece on an Urban Farm, revealing how common place the practice has been amongst chinese and vietnamese immigrant communities in Oakland, California. In a part of the city called Ghost Town, Novella Carpenter has for seven years squatted and farmed a plot of land. In her blog she reveals some lessons, techniques, etc to do with urban farming (both plant and animal). Some of it will be useful come spring when our Berlin Grow Lab shall spring forth :) He… Continue

Added by camalo on January 23, 2010 at 9:28pm — No Comments

camalo "Warming" Raw Foods and Winter

The following excerpt is from RAWSOME by Brigitte Mars. Won't Eating Raw Foods Make You Cold In The Winter? Many people steer away from raw foods in the winter simply because it feels much nicer to have a hot bowl of soup warming up their insides. It's true that newcomers to a raw foods diet may feel cold more easily. One reason for this is that raw foods are less dense in calories, and calories produce heat as food is metabolized by the body. After some time, however, eating raw foods will ca… Continue

Added by camalo on January 23, 2010 at 9:11pm — No Comments

camalo Vitamin B12 and Self-Grown Food

Reggie Bass, a raw foods chef based in California, regularly posts information pertaining to food and health. He began exploring the value of raw foods after years of struggling with obesity. He now teaches food courses open to the public to share many of his finding, including recipes and information derived from food and nutrition science. He also prepares the most unlikely raw food dishes and offers a weekly menu for those trying to incorporate raw food preparation and consumption into a 'nor… Continue

Added by camalo on January 23, 2010 at 9:00pm — No Comments

camalo Allotment Gardens and other Urban Agriculture in Germany

Although written as part of an investigation into German allotments as precedent for a South African model, this paper provides an explanation of the Allotment Garden system in Germany: http://www.cityfarmer.org/germanAllot.html "The History of the German Allotment System The German allotment gardens are plots between 200 and 400 m_ of size mainly used for horticulture and flower production for home consumption. Most of them contain a li… Continue

Added by camalo on January 20, 2010 at 2:17pm — No Comments

camalo Urban Agriculture Symposium in Berlin (2000)

From the archival site of the Urban Agriculture Symposium which took place in Berlin in 2000. The outcome of which should surely provide references and resources for our upcoming Grow Lab. http://www.cityfarmer.org/symposiumBerlin.html "Most of highly developed ancient societies benefitted from the advantages of urban gardens. Modern societies, though much more urbanized, generally forgot about this rich culture. Only very recently,… Continue

Added by camalo on January 20, 2010 at 2:05pm — No Comments

Rachel Wingfield Urban farm planted right in downtown Shenzhen

An urban farm recently planted in the heart of downtown Shenzhen, China as part of the Shenzhen & Hong Kong Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture. The installation, called Landgrab City, is a square plot of land that represents a map of the city and visualizes how much food is required to sustain it. Commissioned by the Shenzhen/Hong Kong Biennale and was created by Joseph Grima, J… Continue

Added by Rachel Wingfield on January 17, 2010 at 11:58pm — No Comments

Rachel Wingfield Getting Our Nitrogen Fix!

An article from SEED Magazine about how we learned to feed ourselves because we learned how to feed plants - the story of modern fertilizer and our ability to make food from air. It argues that another huge technological leap is needed as synthetic ferti… Continue

Added by Rachel Wingfield on January 17, 2010 at 4:46pm — No Comments

camalo Kids' Garden in Berlin

This has been a great discovery, although the plot lease expires at the end of 2010. http://kidsgardenberlin.wordpress.com/garten/ Continue

Added by camalo on January 15, 2010 at 2:15pm — 2 Comments

Rachel Wingfield Sustainable Urbanism

Doug Farr is an architect and planner who wrote the book Sustainable Design: Urban Design with Nature. In this talk, Farr discusses how LEED certification of buildings can only do so much since it doesn’t take into account how buildings are integrated sustainably with its surroundings. He argues that we need to think differently about we organize our cities – more densely in more compact, complete, and walkable neighborhoods – to design sustainability into the way we live. Th… Continue

Added by Rachel Wingfield on January 14, 2010 at 12:00pm — No Comments

Rachel Wingfield Rob Hopkins Transition Movement

We are members and supporters of our local (Stoke Newington) Transition Town Movement, a radically hopeful and community-driven approach to creating societies independent of fossil fuel. Rob Hopkins (founder of the Transition movement) presents the concept in Oxford for this years TED conference. Rob Hopkins proposes a unique solution to our dependency on peak oil - the Transition response, where we prepare ourselves for life without oil and sacrifice our luxuries to build sy… Continue

Added by Rachel Wingfield on November 30, 2009 at 4:00pm — No Comments

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