Big City Greens


ARCH 3170
with Gabriela Ruelas
Professor Ettore Santi
This project proposes how housing and food access can be rethought in Boston’s Mission Hill neighborhood in the context of rising costs, studentification, and institutional encroachment. By providing residents with an urban farm to grow their own crops, a grocery store that serves the area with fresh produce, and reintegrating the Southwest Corridor into the site, the project gives upward mobility to those residing in and around it.

The farm operates in an economic partnership with both the Boston Food Forest Coalition and the owners of the apartment buildings. Residents can help farm the land to receive lowered rent, subsidized through the sale of produce. 
Program, such as a playground, is spread throughout the farm. Residents or those just passing through are given opportunity to interact with the farm and their neighbors.
In the winter, the farm changes to accommodate for cold weather. Greenhouses expand in footprint, and the irrigation pond becomes an ice skating rink.
Resident privacy is created through balconies set back from major pedestrian routes.
Farming processes are visible to those on the site, such as the wash station’s proximity to the plaza.