Parallels

Over the course of May, while also working at the gallery exhibition, I'll be working on a personal project funded by the Millennium Foundation's Grants. The goal is to create links between organizations involved Urban Agriculture in Vancouver, to give the community as a whole greater strength. I've been thinking about what other groups would benefit from becoming more involved in Urban Agriculture- groups like the Tiny Home movement and what I'm going to call the human-powered movement (people who get around on their own energy.) What I'm wondering is- what are good ways to get people cross-pollinating?

Human Centered System

These are some little diagrams I've made, representing what a person needs in life and what they produce. I tried to focus on things that are currently considered 'waste', such as grey water, that could be re-used to provide something else they need. By creating a diagram I can see what needs will be fulfilled by the house itself.
These could be a great way to get some collaborative input from people, they're quick and easy to do. If you have a chance to draw one yourself, I would love to see it posted!
Doing a diagram exclusively of human 'output' was pretty revealing. I found it a lot harder to do, and the concrete items were much fewer. Most of the things on the 'output' chart were things that are generally considered "waste", but with some ingenuity they could actually be used to provide for more of our needs. The other problem was that although we consume lots of food, it's hard to quantify what we actually produce with it aside from living.

Click on the preview pic for a bigger, more readable image.

Designing for the human body

For the course of this project, we've been working with this concept of designing a house for the human body rather than for the object. This is a more difficult mindset shift than I thought it would be, so I'd like to take this opportunity to throw out some ideas and concepts to bounce around.

One of the ways we went about doing this in the early design stages was to break down the home into needs instead of rooms. We listed needs like eating/ food preparation, sleeping, socializing, working, hygiene, and broke down spaces for these into social, private and intimate space. This way, we came up with the division of space. (I'll post a photo of the floorplan soon:)) This is a fairly non-traditional breakdown- you'll notice that there is no defined 'eating space,' (kitchen table location or dining room) as we found that many people prefer to eat in the living room or in the place of socialization. We also observed that the living room has become a dead room in many parties, and the kitchen is more often a place of gathering. The open space that includes the food prep area and the social space will be the best way to activate the spaces, and meet both needs.

Addressing aspects of the house based on human needs was also done by looking at patterns in how we meet our needs currently. For example, kitchens- designed with deep cupboards, a large fridge and freezer and very little space designated for fresh fruits and vegetables are a shaping factor in our diets. It's very easy now to purchase a lot of packaged/ preserved items that have very little nutritional value and require low involvment on the part of the user. It's also clear that the advent of supermarkets, shopping carts and especially the fridge was a catalyst for our highly wasteful food consumption.

If instead a kitchen were designed with more space designated for fresh fruits and veggies, shallower cupboards, clearly defined systems of waste management and were pleasing to work in, then the user would be more likely to take the time to cook, and would enjoy that process.

There are numerous other case studies/ research that we're developing on the specifics of redesigning space for the human body. I'm looking at alternatives to chairs/ seating, multi-purposing rooms and building more varied movement/ tasks into our lifestyles.

More on that later.