Date : 2013

Harvest Green project is rooted in a concept that challenges the status quo of how energy and food is produced, delivered and sustained in our city, neighbourhoods, and individual single-family homes. taking cues from the city of Vancouver’s eco-density charter, and in particular, it’s new laneway housing initiatives, the harvest green project proposes to overlay a new ‘green energy and food web’ across the numerous residential neighborhoods and laneways within the city as these communities address future increased densification. The city’s laneways will be transformed into green energy and food conduits, or ‘green streets’, where energy and food is ‘harvested’ via proposed micro laneway live-work homes. An array of mobile nomadic prefab laneway homes (‘modpods’) are proposed to provide needed adaptable affordable housing for the city, but equally important, will act as incremental nodes of sustainable energy and urban farming infrastructure for it and the immediate home, as well as the city at large. the laneway homes will act as an armature for the harvesting of renewable energy sources such as solar, and wind, with excess energy sold back to energy companies to feed into the rest of the city’s energy system. the concept of ‘harvesting’ is also explored more literally, in the project, where the laneways and modpods will act as a venue for the harvesting of rainwater and urban farming food. Private and communal rainwater cisterns will provide irrigation for edible green roofs, community and private edible gardens, fruit bearing vegetation, and vertical gardens that will inhabit the facades, laneway, and yards and spaces between buildings. the goal is for homeowners to re-think the obsession with the suburban lawn, in favor of creating ‘edible-estates’.