Isabella Rodriguez
Living in the Sky
The Common Jam
The project aims to bring the same place identities to the site when it was used as a Common, keeping the ground free for the public, with special places for people to enjoy and to produce sustainable agriculture.
The site is divided into three main sections: the berries plantation, part of the cash crops for jam production; the fishing and leisure areas in the middle and the smallholdings next to the main building.
The program starts at the large storage in the underground, going up to the public floors, with the cafes, the farm shop, the jam factory and becoming private with the co-living floors dedicated to ten families. The co-living spaces foster the concept of cultural exchange and community, considering that the families would be able to share what their crop production and split chores between themselves. It also means simplification, fitting more people in fewer areas, allowing future towers to be placed on the site, with different types of food production and public amenities.
The Jam factory also boots public participation by allowing visitors to participate in the process of making and trying the jam afterwards.
Common, Co-living, Jam, Public, Place Identity
Frenza
Faenza is a mobile Dutch soup kitchen that will be placed and dissembled in several European countries. Historically, the pea soup called Snert, used to be served next to frozen lakes in the Netherlands, cooked in charcoal open stoves. By that time, people used to be served on the streets, without special apparatus. The project intends to bring an approximation to the experience that people used to have a hundred years ago on Dutch streets to the Abbey ruins, in Reading. The soup will be cooked in an external steel stove placed outdoors, to be visible and enticing by its aroma to whoever walks around the area.As part of the program, the staff is composed by eight people that will live in the facility.The project contemplates flexible structural aspects like timber, steel and a special type of foundation that enables the building to be allocated in different surfaces and landscapes.
Heritage, Soup, Culture, Timber, Reading
