Reconnecting People with Food Growing Through Modular Farmhouse Architecture

30/5/2019 The Farmhouse
The Farmhouse
Our Farmhouse is an attempt to reconnect people in the city with the process of growing our food. Since
the industrial revolution, we grew apart from our food and that has a harmful affect on the health of
people and the health of our environment.

https://www.precht.at/the-farmhouse/?fbclid=IwAR0VrMKZvPIMnq8LV23bL0f5aSSYXly7ntpDnqstYdq2K0SHyq_pLrZFq9s 1/17

”Our motivation for ‘the Farmhouse’ is personal. 2 years ago we relocated our office from the centre of
Beijing to the mountains of Austria. We live and work now off the grid and try to be as self-sufficient
as somehow possible. We grow most of the food ourselves and get the rest from neighbouring farmers. We
have now a very different relation to food. A tomato from your garden tastes different then the one
shipped around the globe. We are aware that this life-style is not an option for everyone, so we try to
develop projects, that brings food back to cities.”

But food and shelter are human needs and architects can rethink their relation. There is an opportunity
to reconnect architecture and agriculture and change them to the betterment of both. “I think we miss
this physical and mental connection with nature and this project could be a catalyst to reconnect
ourselves with the life-cycle of our environment.”


In the next 50 years more food will be consumed than in the last 10.000 years combined and 80% will be
eaten in cities. It is clear that we need to find an ecological alternative to our current food system.
What and where we grow and eat. Topics like organic agriculture, clean meat, social sourcing and ‘farm
to table’ will be key elements of this change. That means that our urban areas need to become part of an
organic loop with the countryside to feed our population and provide food security for cities.
If food is grown within the region, the supply chain and the use of packaging gets shortened. Stacked
gardens reduce the need to convert forests, savannahs and mangroves and allows used farmland to
naturally restore itself. Vertical farms can produce a higher ratio of crop per planted area. The indoor
climate of greenhouses protect the food against varying weather conditions and offers different eco-
systems for different plants.


Our Farmhouse runs on an organic life-cycle of byproducts inside the building, where one processes
output is another processes input: Buildings create already a large amount of heat, which can be reused
for plants like potatoes, nuts or beans to grow. A water-treatment system filters rain- and greywater,
enriches it with nutrients and cycles it back to the greenhouses. The food waste can be locally
collected in the buildings basement, turned into compost and reused to grow more food.


The foundation of the Farmhouse is to encourage citizens to grow food locally, but it also continues
this ecological aspect with its architecture.
“In a way, we construct our farmland and we plant our building.” Trees provide the main building
material for the Farmhouse. Cross Laminated Timber panels are used to develop the modular system of
structure, finishes and planters. Working with CLT has a lot of benefits. It is precise to fabricate,
easy to transport and quick to install. Living with wood has also ecological benefits: Trees grow by a
natural source of energy. The process that creates structural engineered wood products takes far less
energy than steel, cement or concrete and produces fewer greenhouse gases during manufacturing. Further,
wood stores carbon in itself (approximately one tone per cubic meter) thus it has, compared to other
building materials, a lighter overall environmental footprint.


The Farmhouse consists of a fully modular building system, which is prefabricated offsite and flat-
packed delivered by trucks. Prefabrication of a modular building kit shortens the time for construction
and its affect on the surrounding. The building system is based on structural clarity of traditional A-
Frame houses and connects to a diagrid that runs the loads through the building. Each wall of the frame
exists of 3 layers. An inside layer with finishes, electricity and pipes, a middle layer with structure
and insulation and an outside layer with gardening elements and water supply.
For single-family structures, this systems gives a tool to home-owners to design their own place, based
on the needs and the demands to living and farming. Structural and gardening elements, waste management
units, water treatment, hydroponics and solar systems can be selected from a catalog of modules and
offers a certain flexibility for various layouts.
The hands-on approach of the DIY movement played a big role in the design. Not only for the gardening
part of the building, but also for its construction. This method allows owners to self-construct their
tiny houses based on their chosen layout. Architecture that is home-built with food that is home-grown.


Taller structures are assembled as duplex-sized A-frames, which provide a large open space on the first
floor for a living-room and kitchen and a tent-like space on the second floor for bedrooms and
bathrooms. The angled walls give space for gardening on their outside and create a V-shaped buffer zone
between the apartments. This also lets natural ventilation and natural light into the building. The
building invokes a direct connection with a natural surrounding, that stands apart from the concrete
landscape of our cities. A tent that is surrounded by nature. A Yin&Yang of colorful gardens and healthy
interiors.


With the domination of the ‘International Style’ with concrete frames and curtain walls, our buildings
became mostly unanimous and uninspiring. It made our cities look alike disregarding culture or climate.
Our cities are filled with ivory towers, that just consume from the environment without giving anything
back. They are island and their connection with the surrounding stops at the doorman. Due to population
growth and the vast expansion of our urban areas, we also pushed nature outside and became distant to
it.
“If we stay disconnected with our eco-system, we cannot tackle the issues of our time. Reversing climate
change, less pollution and a healthy food system, is now part of architecture. Those problems wont be
solved by new technology or new products alone. They will be solved by empathy. And this can become a
task for us architects. If we want to encourage people to care about the environment, we need to bring
the environment back into our cites.”
"The Farmhouse' by Precht
video rendered & cutted by VirginLemon – Follow their art on Instagram, they are incredible

Reconnecting People with Food Growing Through Modular Farmhouse Architecture

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30/5/2019 The Farmhouse

"The Farmhouse' by Precht

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