COMMUNITY GARDENS DIY FENCING KIT
SELECTEDTorino Geodesign - Mobilizing the collective intelligence: 48 projects for Turin
Program Participatory design, community gardens DIY fencing kit, "Farmers Knowledge Book"
Team 2A+P Architettura (Gianfranco Bombaci, Domenico Cannistraci, Pietro Chiodi, Matteo Costanzo, Valerio Franzone)
Client "Abitare", Torino 2008 World Design Capital, Municipality of Turin
Location Falchera - Turin, Italy
Area 72 m2
Year 2008
Exhibition Palafuksas - Turin, May 23 > June 13, 2008
Catalogue Abitare n. 483 (June 2008)
Links www.torinogeodesign.net
www.torinogeodesign.net/orti-urbani
Community Gardens DIY Fencing Kit is a set of instructions for making fences with synthetic fabric. This material is used for the advertisements covering the scaffoldings while restoring buildings' façades. Once the restorations are completed and the scaffoldings are removed, this material is always thrown away, but it can have a second life because of its resistance to wind and UV rays. In addition, it's cheap —if not free.
About 8,000 people live in Falchera, one of Turin's oldest social housing outskirts. The neighborhood community gardens, which occupy a vast area bordering a pond, produce a steady supply of fresh fruit and vegetables. Still, the fences around them are made of rusty old bed frames and other discarded materials, resulting in unique and personalized structures that are unstable and dangerous.
The enthusiasts who cultivate these gardens have never coalesced as a community and have never been able to organize the area better: their constant bickering and rivalry made any common decision challenging. However, a series of recent meetings between the farmers and the local representatives culminated in a unanimous request for a stable fencing system that could also shelter the gardens against strong winds and hailstones, still maintaining that heterogeneous and harlequinesque look that characterized them.
Once appointed for the project, the first step was organizing a participatory design process. The Community Gardens DIY Fencing Kit is the outcome of the meetings with the community. The kit offers multiple assembly options and strong and cheap materials. Its fabric is printed with images that vary from piece to piece, allowing each garden's fence to be different in color and pattern.
The participatory process at the project's base resulted in the "Farmers Knowledge Handbook," a treasure containing years of farming knowledge.
