RE-TERRA 2021: Buting Living Park

Project Goals

• Community Food Security: Balancing capacity building and yield
• Community Inclusion, Empowerment, and Wealth Generation: A circular system where environment, food, and people are in harmony

Community Insights

Anghel is amongst the young residents who frequent Buting Linear Park. When the weather permits, he bikes, skates, and gleams the sunset with his friends in the space. When asked by this team of designers what he would think of an urban farm being built in the park, Anghel shared he would like to 1) clean up the waterway, 2) take part in learning and growing food and 3) make sure they can still use the space to play.

“Sana matigil na ang pagtapon ng basura sa tubig. Gusto rin namin makatulong mapaganda ang aming lugar”

Anghel, 6

We observed the community and their interactions with the space. Although we understand the main goals of the competition, we wanted to take into consideration the current behavior of the community – the first stewards of the land. We recognize that for our programs to be fully sustainable and implementable it has to consider the context and connections of people and place. 

Space Design Features

Our Pocket Garden entry reimagines the space as a healthy, living life form where the interdependent roles of water, food, and community are essential to it thriving. Alive with its own dynamism, people and place form a mutually beneficial relationship that is geared towards sustainability and harmony. We believe that Buting Living Park takes on food security through a unique lens that adds value to all stakeholders in the urban ecosystem.

• Amphitheatre Open Space + Central Hub: Building typology and landscape work together to a celebrate core element of Filipino culture – social interaction and engagement. Garden plots and the central hub are easily accessible upon entering the site.
• Promenade Bridge: Elevated promenade and abundant green surfaces help keep the area cool and reduce ambient air temperature. Pedestrian trails provide for active and passive recreational uses.
• Community Hub and Market: A central education and wealth generating hub makes food security a goal everyone in the community can take ownership of and seek value in.
• Terraced Garden Beds and Agri Surfaces: Horizontal and vertical garden beds purposefully positioned within the site to capture the ideal sunlight needed to produce a multitude of crops and maximize growing space. A rainwater catch system collects storm water and distributes it evenly throughout the garden beds. The horizontal garden beds utilize the terrace design to have a more efficient use of water and to add levels to the space. The vertical hydroponic beds provide a foliage of green walls around the space while utilizing vertical surfaces to maximize yield.
• Waterfront Seating: An integrated natural water corridor with active, community-driven spaces to reorient their relationship with natural environment. Distributed areas along the phytoremediation edge provide intimate outdoor space while accommodating the site’s hydrology requirements.
• Shaded Seating: Space for passive recreational use.

The project hopes to introduce values of sustainability and a balanced ecology by reorienting the space to value water, community empowerment, and wealth creation through smart agriculture.

Pocket Garden Team

Strategy

SMART AGRICULTURE – Contrary to popular perception that smart agriculture means automated agriculture, BUTING LIVING PARK promotes agriculture programs that are multi-functional, circular, and balanced. Incorporating climate-smart and disaster-resilient growing mediums alongside recreational features, the agriculture system embedded in the space is one that interacts, grows, and thrives alongside the community. The recommended programs are diverse, cost-efficient, and grounded in the realities of the location. These programs include vertical food gardens which provide crops and shade, and agricultural terraces which double as an irrigated grow space and recreational areas. Tower gardens, which are space, waste and yield efficient can also be seamlessly adopted into the homes of the residents.

Buting Living Park projected annual yield: 83,316kg/ 2,500sqm
17x more yield than average monoculture farm

WATER – As an essential resource to all living organisms, water serves as a design anchor to the spatial, agriculture, and community programs. The decision to create an urban identity based on the orientation and revitalization of water sources is strategic to the long-game of food security. The phytoremediation design doubles as an amphitheater for recreation and gives a direct line of vision towards the water – instigating a behavioral change against dumping trash into the water.

COMMUNITY – Community hubs and a recreational area allow the reimagined space to bring abundance to the community. A central education and wealth generating hub makes food security a goal everyone in the community can take ownership of and find value in. The promenade bridge, open play spaces, and waterfront amphitheater also bring a new element of play and rest for the community. Community ownership is what will breathe life to BUTING LIVING PARK. Through dedicated spaces where residents can access information, learning, food, and rest, it’s a mindful exercise in a space inspiring circular economy and potential wealth generation for the entire ecosystem.