Community garden and kitchen as catalysts for transforming the public space and the neighborhood from within
Author Marjetica Potrc and Wilde Westen group
The Netherlands, Amsterdam, Lodewijk van Deysselstraat 61
Authors Marjetica Potrc and Wilde Westen group: Lucia Babina, Reinder Bakker, Hester van Dijk, Sylvain Hartenberg, Merijn Oudenampsen, Eva Pfannes, Henriette Waal
Community garden and kitchen as catalysts for transforming the public space and the neighborhood from within
Strengths: Situated in the garden city of Nieuw West Amsterdam, one of the largest redevelopment sites in Europe, the project involves the Geuzenveld en Slotermeer district in a participatory process about local food production. The location serves as a common kitchen celebrating the many multicultural cuisines of the residents. The garden is transformed into lived-in and worked-in green. Farming and cooking are viewed as a way for people to share knowledge and to re-appropriate the neighborhood..
Difficulties: The project builds on the history of the Westelijke Tuinsteden as a garden city. Right now the area is being redeveloped. A lot of the collective green space is being privatized or it is simply deleted to make way for higher density buildings. The project tries to preserve the garden quality of the area and to develop and test a workable typology of vegetable gardens within the neighborhood and the city.
Extra information: The project is a site case study researching architecture as a social structure and exploring the potential of collective urban agriculture. A careful survey about resources and features of Geuzenveld en Slotermeer drove us to develop a site-specific research-project for the neighborhood. In particular the fact that the main asset of this area is the green, encouraged us to re-introduce nature and urban agriculture as a strategic tool to recompose the current eroded social.
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