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Scarcity Factory

Part 1 Project 2014
Nicholas Shackleton
University of Greenwich | UK
The project has been set in the future during a period of peak scarcity; a time when society has insufficient productive resources to fulfill all human wants and needs.
The Heygate Estate has been lying in ruins for the last fifty years and its land, situated in Central London, has become a commodity of high value. In an effort to counter the limited supply of resource the government has staged a revival of the rationing effort and dig for victory campaign of the war period. All large pieces of open land, including parks and another viable space, are to become an agricultural resource to support London.

The Scarcity Factory is a proposal to transform the Heygate into such a resource. The proposal seeks to part demolish and reutilize the existing concrete structures and use the large open space at the center of Heygate as spaces of agricultural production.

All exported goods from the Scarcity Factory have been selected for production efficiency and large output capacity in order to maximize land use and benefit the local area.

Using the existing pathways of the Heygate estate as the premise for circulation, all goods farmed within the Scarcity Factory are gathered and transported to the production silos via a site wide rail cart system. All waste products (human, poultry and land use) are composted and reduced for the production of the biogas which feeds into the factory, trade hall and rail system. Once collected, the food is processed for sale and consumption from the storage silos which are built above the market space. This allows for an immediate transfer of goods from farm to community, either by rationing or the surplus market sale.

Heading up the whole scheme is the trade hall: a building that not only trades the scarce resources but also broadcasts the problem the city faces by highlighting the bloated value of the Scarcity Factory's output.

Nicholas Shackleton

Tutor(s)
Mr Rahesh Ram

2014
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