Responsive Grocery
Site: Poughkeepsie, NY
Our food system favors large scale factory farming over smaller regional farms. Currently 4% of farms produce 66% of America’s agriculture. These large farms favor efficiency and maximum output, and have no moral regard for their negative impacts on the environment or economy. Maximum efficiency has led to the rise of monoculture that has increased the fragility of the system.
In the current distribution system small and medium farms are cut off from the communities that surround them. With little means to sell at local scale, they are forced to sell their crops for less to large distributors. If this current system continues to operate without change, there will be a massive restructuring of the global economy. Food insecurity and famine will rapidly accelerate due to global climate change.
This project redefines how we distribute food.
In this new system, localized food security becomes the most valuable asset. The small farmer is connected to the neighboring towns and the rebalanced distribution of crops is more in tune with the rural communities it currently neglects. The project examines the city of Poughkeepsie, where the current layout of grocery stores makes it difficult for the low income residents to access healthy food.
Site: Poughkeepsie, NY
Our food system favors large scale factory farming over smaller regional farms. Currently 4% of farms produce 66% of America’s agriculture. These large farms favor efficiency and maximum output, and have no moral regard for their negative impacts on the environment or economy. Maximum efficiency has led to the rise of monoculture that has increased the fragility of the system.
In the current distribution system small and medium farms are cut off from the communities that surround them. With little means to sell at local scale, they are forced to sell their crops for less to large distributors. If this current system continues to operate without change, there will be a massive restructuring of the global economy. Food insecurity and famine will rapidly accelerate due to global climate change.
This project redefines how we distribute food.
In this new system, localized food security becomes the most valuable asset. The small farmer is connected to the neighboring towns and the rebalanced distribution of crops is more in tune with the rural communities it currently neglects. The project examines the city of Poughkeepsie, where the current layout of grocery stores makes it difficult for the low income residents to access healthy food.
This new system will incorporate past distribution elements on a smaller scale. It will reclaim the current bigbox grocery stores and use the space to ensure the city has an adequate supply of food.
The old downtown large store is reclaimed as a food receiving center, storage and processing facility. It is the mothership grocery focused on seasonal crop availability, with moveable partitions that change with the produce supply. In times of less yield variety, more space in the store is dedicated to community center activities, agriculture education and greenhouse. The old bodegas will be the secondary distribution system to get fresh food dispersed into the neighborhoods.
The bodega reverts back to the old local grocer and combines with a more contemporary convenience store drive-through typology. The new bodega has a thickened façade that responds to the multiple urban conditions that make each bodega unique. The canopy extends over the sidewalk, blurring the edge between public space of the sidewalk and the space of the bodega. The produce shelves allow for the display of goods on the sidewalk, or when some cases permit, the ability for customers to buy groceries from their cars.