The Architecture of Greenhouses
As we get ready for fall plantings and dream about our gardens in the spring, we’ve been frequenting greenhouses as of late and in turn, can’t stop thinking about the greenhouse infrastructures and equipment that make up our favorite garden centers.
PlacemakingUS did a great article about placemaking within your urban agriculture sites, and they provide a great list of tips for transforming community garden spaces beyond planting beds. Here at Praxis, we wanted to dive deeper into the smart placemaking within the urban ag realm as well as the infrastructure of greenhouses themselves.
Illustration by Praxis Placemaking Studio
Consisting of a kit-of-parts that are easy to assemble and durable for outdoor environments, greenhouse systems might just be the perfect, unconventional tool for temporary installations.
This got us thinking. From steel benches, grow tables, and Unistrut assemblies to polycarbonate panels and shade cloths — greenhouse infrastructure systems are an untapped market for designers. Consisting of a kit-of-parts that are easy to assemble and durable for outdoor environments, greenhouse systems might just be the perfect, unconventional tool for temporary installations.
We want to explore how these assembled pieces can interact in public spaces and extend out for a deeper experience — think urban ag pop-up with seating and place activation using only greenhouse structures and systems. This basket weave display from Poly-Tex, in particularly, is an exciting find and the spatial implications are already giving us plenty of ideas. Throw in a small stage for play and some simple seating and you can quickly envision outdoor rooms for your next placemaking event.
Photo by Brian Baksa