PRODUCTIVE ARCHITECTURE | Alternative forms of architecture for urban agriculture and community building

Architecture comprises 3 out of 4 basic needs for survival: shelter, water and fire (in terms of energy ). The fourth remaining necessity, FOOD is usually left outside the architectural sphere. In the context of nowadays humanity is struggling to feed and to host current population and according to the statistics by 2050 Earth population will reach up to 9 billion and as a first consequence, the urban areas will increase in number and density. Refering to European sphere according to European Commision there is also an increasing trend in numbers of citizens and density in the cities among Europe by 2050. New solutions of how we produce food and how we live are necessary. All over the world agriculture has been in the last decades and it still is strongly dominated by industrial methods. The biggest concerns regarding agro-industry are related to its unsustainable farming practices ( use of chemicals, pesticides etc ) which can create a false sense of food security or healthy food among communities and it implies a high level of environment pollution. This thesis places and recognize the food as the fourth element under the architectural sphere’s umbrella next to the other 3 above mentioned and it proposes that agriculture should harmonize with architecture through technologies and design in order to provide new and in the same time alternative-continuous food producing spaces, strategies / food stocks to be able to sustain urban life, claiming that in fact ‘’we don’t need playful design proposals, we need high-impact built system-projects – prototypes for resilient futures we’ve been promised’’.