Special Recognition

• Division: Miscellaneous
• Location: Chicago, IL
• Architect: Mobile Farmstead Design Team
• Client: The Resource Center/City Farm
• General contractor:
• Consultants: Halvorson Partners (structural)

Overview

For an organization that sets up small working farms on vacant urban lots until the land gets developed, the architect designed a structure that could similarly occupy and improve the land even if its tenure is temporary. With what jurors pronounced a "noble" small project in place, the workers farming on trucked in topsoil on any of the city's 90,000 vacant lots would have access to secure storage for tools and produce sheltered workspace, an office, restrooms, temporary housing for one employee and a small farm stand. It would all be built of such low-resource materials as shipping containers, chain-link fencing, canvas and straw bales—and it could all be dismantled and moved to another location easily. Jurors nodded to the project's social consciousness, commending its planners' ability to make valuable use of otherwise overlooked urban space.