Our SLAM Presentation

Last Friday the Masters Final Project students presented their work in a ‘slam’ format for the entire class. We each had 3 minutes to communicate our vision of what our projects were and what direction we thought we’d be taking throughout the semester to push our design ideas. It was a really good chance to be able to see what everyone is doing and also great practice and being succinct and to the point.

Below is the script that we used for our presentation. The “*” means that we changed the slide on the pdf presentation, which is included in this post. Enjoy!

 

“This project stems from a desire to explore the opportunities that emerge from considering three separate industries in the context of one another. * The industries of fish farming, beer brewing, and agriculture have been historically important and remain relevant today, with both beer brewing and agriculture already having rich ties to the city of Minneapolis. * We are interested in proposing a new Architectural, Ecological, and Financial model as a means of bringing these industries back into the city. * By looking holistically at the three processes, we hope to find synergies that will begin to remake our river edge into an industrially relevant, ecologically healthy, and community welcoming place.

 * We are locating our project several blocks northwest of the Lowry Bridge within the context of, and as a compliment to TLS and KVA’s RiverFirst proposal for revitalizing the Minneapolis riverfront. * We intend to work at the scale of our 12 acre site and at a 1:1 scale of personal, human interaction * – proposing not only the design of the project but also imagined scenarios for its users. * Starting with precedent processes and technologies from each industry to guide us, we hope to present propositions, which expand each industry’s current practices, and to test the architectural implications that emerge from such scenarios. * By programming social activities of eating and drinking within the project, we plan to challenge the current distance between our culture’s production and consumption.

* We propose:

• a fish farm that is a humane habitat for fish with potential to engage our community while providing the FIRST source of fresh saltwater seafood in Minneapolis.

* We propose:

• a brewery that adds to the strong local beer community currently in Minneapolis, while introducing new ways for consumers to engage with craft beer and its making

* We propose:

• urban agriculture that becomes the source of produce for the onsite brewery and restaurant in addition to beautifying the river’s desolate landscape

* Finally,

We propose:

•A place for people who use the RiverFIRST parkway system as well as people who enjoy good beer, fresh seafood and appreciate locally sourced operations – a place that welcomes and encourages community engagement, contains locally supported systems and weaves together industry.”

Johansson_Jen_Dave

Updates

Since our last post, we have researched the fish farming industry, looking at several variations on practices and processes. During the research we decided we would like to pursue the idea of raising saltwater fish in our fish farm. After all, the original concern was for the over fished oceans and a desire to give rest to that ecosystem. By bringing saltwater species to the mid-west for growth, we hope to cut the distribution distance required to have these varieties locally.

This image shows from where the species of saltwater fish we wish to grow come, in relation to where we are.

This image shows all of the places one can buy seafood near our site in Minneapolis.

Local Ocean, a company out of New York, is the first to successfully practice commercially viable, inland saltwater fish farming. We are excited by their work and intend to use this practice as a precedent for our own. Below is a preliminary diagram of what our process may look like – including a potential species food chain and potential useful waste products from the system. To note: unlike today’s typical fish farm, we would like to design more of a fish habitat – something a little more humane and worth viewing over something that is designed to reap the most yield from the least resources. *More on this later.

Diagramming the fish growing process.

Our Brew. and Bamboo. parts of the project have been given a fair amount of attention as well. The biggest change is that bamboo will no longer be grown in our garden. Instead, we would like to grow the ingredients to make beer – barley and hops. Not only are we looking for a new name that is as ‘catchy as Fish.Brew.Bamboo, but we are also realizing the astounding amounts of resources that go into commercial beer brewing – the numbers impressed me anyway. Again, we are using precedents of breweries that are successful and are doing things with which we are concerned. Because they so willingly give their statistics to the public, New Belgium brewing has become a model of process for what we hope could be achieved in the brewery. Based on their practices and the capacities of some of our favorite breweries, we have been able to size our brew system for programming purposes and spatial requirements and to also size the growing area we would need to produce barley and hops for this desired capacity. This is where we have found an issue. Apparently, for a 20K bbl/year output we would need over a million pounds of grain (malted barley) a year, which would require something like 600 acres of land… So we will propose that the garden grows a percentage of the specialty barley needed (these are the grains that add unique qualities to the beer). Below are the process diagrams for both beer brewing and barley and hops gardening.

Diagramming the beer brewing process – first half.

Diagramming the beer brewing process – second half.

Diagramming the process of growing and processing barley and hops.

This wraps up the catch up portion of the blog, however we still need to flesh out the expansion that the project has taken in terms of impact and necessity – what we would like the proposal to mean to the community. Watch for this post as well!

Fish Farm Research

Gathering materials and beginning the making of some sketchbooks to use throughout the semester.

 

Titan IPA is a big, aggressively hopped India Pale Ale brewed for hop disciples. It starts out with piney hop aromas and citrus hop flavors, and finishes with a nice rich, malty sweetness that is balanced with crisp hop bitterness. Served in a 16oz goblet glass.

 

Tonight we are working on some fish farming research to get ourselves up to speed on species, practices, and the general process. We hope to have some information in the next few days.

 

david j.