Growing Towers

Today, the agricultural industry is experiencing economic, ecological, and social difficulties.  It seems that in the future, it will be introduced to the urban space, and this has many advantages. Agriculture has a distinct and familiar spatial language as does the urban landscape. Inserting agriculture into the city creates a new urban-agricultural morphology.

The project is located in Tel-Aviv, between the historic railway and the future light rail route to Jaffa Road – an area that has a history of manufacture and agriculture. Without definite classifications and borders, it holds a unique combination of diverse styles, populations, and functions.

The amalgamation of two seemingly opposing systems – city and agriculture – reveals an opportunity to create an intensive green urban fabric that will serve as a social, educational, and ecological resource. The fabric combines educational and commercial workshops with recreational buildings, as well as high-rise residential buildings and plant-growing structures. Production, marketing, and food consumption systems are reorganized in a way that supports a sustainable way of life, making an empowered use in the social and symbolic importance of food. A new urban age is born.

The plan allows agricultural production for about a third of the inhabitants of the neighborhoods surrounding the project. The coronavirus crisis enhances the importance and the specific value of local-independent production as well as providing a green, open, and safe space.

The project addresses the need to convert a future “technical” need into a visual, social, sensual, and cultural urban generator, and thus changes the urban lifestyle as we know it.