We first "met" Lorenza Casini, a student in the Materiality College at Manchester School of Architecture, when she contacted us last year regarding our post on MPreis supermarkets in the course of her research for this project.More details
identify this plant . We are very pleased now to share the finished product now with you.
With an abandoned brownfield site chosen by the instructors, the studio presented an urban design and architectural design challenge: to propose a program for the site and to develop the architectural scheme.
Lorenza's proposal merges architecture, landscape, infrastructure, and food supply chains to develop an urban farmland and public space in the heart of Manchester.
"My 5th year project looks at the architectural typology of food retailing in the UK and its global trading scheme. Supermarket chains implement a global sourcing system to cut supply chain costs and to service multiple countries. This is not an efficient and environmental system that can be prolonged for the future.
"My brief explores a model which could be deployed to distribute locally produced food by alternate forms of transport and revisits the proportion of the built element on the former Docks site. The structure accommodating the services for retailing is re-sized and the remaining site becomes an urban farmland to generate more fresh products. Materials form their relation to this new program strongly transform the surrounding barren environment, to allow a diverse range of new activities to take place on this former ship canal site."
