makeshift

Now, perhaps more than ever, architects are compelled by 'The City'; by the global 50% urbanisation threshold reached in 2008, by questions of density, mass, form, 'bigness'. The whole conversation around the design of cities has been based on the idea of cities as objects on a map - surrounded by white space.

But that view of cities is, of course, a myth. What we see as a 'city' is really a stage set: an illusion of stasis created by buildings, institutions and routines. But the reality is that either we move around, or goods move around on our behalf. The survival of that stage set is totally dependent on systems which ensure the continuous supply of food, water, goods, and energy to our cities. Farmland, motorways, distribution centres, infrastructures, container shipping ports... these 'server' systems are, in a very pragmatic sense, the super-architectures of our time. The engine of a consumer society at its peak.

Yet it's becoming increasingly evident that we can no longer afford to take the smooth operation of those systems for granted. In recent years, the consolidation of the food system, and the shift towards a "just-in-time" logistics model has created a supposedly hyper-efficient food supply, which at the same time is highly vulnerable to shocks - and hugely energy intensive. So fast is the turnover of food-to-waste, that the major supermarket chains report to COBRA that cities contain, at any one time, only about 3 days worth of food.* 

Map of the UK Strategic Road Network Showing the location of the RDC's (Regional Distribution Centres) of the 'big three': Sainsbury, Tesco and Asda Wal-Mart.

Our food system does make a massive contribution to climate change, loss of biodiversity and global water poverty but the threats we face from it are far more imminent than that. DEFRA estimate that the true cost of food distribution to the UK economy is no less than £9bn per year. Richard Heinberg points out that the perceived 'efficiency' of the modern food system is also mythical - it actually takes 10 calories of oil to produce only 1 calorie of food. So it can only be perceived as efficient while oil remains so cheap.

Many of us have been enthusiastic to join the vilification of intensive farms, supermarket chains and motorways as put forward by many environmentalists, and echoed their call for 'retreat': a 'moral' shift towards local, organic production, without use of fertiliser or pesticides, and an abstinence from meat. In doing so we have been guilty of a rather modern naivety (and hypocrisy). In reality, most of us wouldn't like to be without bananas, wine or chocolate, and would be unwilling to really live with the social implications of a sudden shift towards totally organic, localised food production, not only in terms of its impact on our own lifestyles, but also on the poorest - who would effectively be priced out of food by such a move.

Our generation faces a massive challenge - and opportunity - to fundamentally redesign our industrial-age system of mining food - towards a resilient, sustainable mode of farming food - all without losing our capacity to produce and distribute food on a massive scale. We need to embark of a series of large scale agricultural and infrastructural experiments in how we feed cities.

Server is one such proposed experiment - based an almost absurdly simple proposition: could a motorway be self-sufficient? That is, could we unhook it from oil, and tie it into the surrounding agricultural economy, a belt of farmland whose major crop is .. mobility.

Algaculture producing Biodiesel The annual fuel-demands of the study section of motorway require an oil-field belt 292m wide.

The project takes a 7-mile section of the M1 motorway in the midlands, and investigates its redesign as a self-sufficient farming belt, producing no overall waste and consuming no major external resources.Based on existing processes, prices and capacities, it attempts to choreograph a sort of agricultural ecosystem, in which the waste of one process is seen as the feedstock for the next.

Industrial Ecology In a very straightforward way, this is a replacement for the conventional 'masterplan'. The viability of any given programme is judged more in terms of its compatability with this map than any spatial one.

Integrating these process, rather than allowing them to be seen as entirely separate industries within an exclusively monetary economy results not just in improved financial viability, but also suggests a kind of ex-urban productive landscape, which generates social and cultural conditions which are beyond the designers control. The shift from linear conveyor-belt industry to a balanced ecology extends beyond simply material processes but to the underlying approach towards knowledge. Effectively the server belt is conceived as producing not just food, but also knowledge - through experimental ('knowledge-intensive') agriculture. Each programme broadcasts information, data and stories on wi-fi and short-range FM broadcasts. In effect, the belt becomes a sort of 1-to-1 museum, where users become citizens rather than consumers: exposed to a continuous knowledge of the agricultural and rural systems of which they are a part.

The result highlights the extent to which many of our social and cultural norms are actually byproducts of a very crudely designed industrial / economic complex. It constitutes a challenge to some of narrow political dichotomies which currently dominate green politics: negotiating trade offs, trying to persuade consumers to abstain, and investing our effort on what is effectively damage limitation.

A good example of this can be found in a story which broke during the research stages of this project in 2009. The Highways Agency announced that the M4 motorway would switch its lights off in the middle of the night, knowing that statistically this would lead to a greater number of deaths, but justifying this on the basis of reduced carbon: a corrosive political trade-off between one human life and another. By contrast - the server belt would produce enough energy from CHP (combined heat and power) units burning biogas, that the lighting demands of the motorway would be met using only 10% of it. We need to see our task not so much as a 'green revolution ' - as an industrial evolution, designing generous terms of engagement in a  smart industrial pattern rather than preaching abstinence from a dumb one.

Server, as a planning project would be a massive undertaking. It is hugely speculative - it's riddled with unresolved problems, unintended consequences. At the same time, confronted by the transition to a post-oil society, by the obsolescence of our industrial-age food system: it is beginning to look less like a speculation than a prediction, less inconceivable than inevitable. The big question is: why should we do it now? Surely, one might ask, if oil is going to become an increasingly irrational dependency for the energy market, then won't the market itself begin to 'correct' itself - in other words as oil becomes more expensive, won't the alternatives become more and more viable, and should we not just wait until that happens? Believe it or not, the broad government policy over the last decades has more or less stuck to this view, often being of accused of a 'let Tesco do it' approach to the food system, and worse, a 'let the market respond' approach to peak oil.

There are 3 reasons why this project, and others like it, should be piloted on a purely anticipatory basis, rather than simply 'allowed to happen' reactively.

First, markets aren't actually as rational as we might assume. We know they tend to take a fairly narrow view of problems - so for example, businesses are more likely to focus on the average price of oil than the full 'domino' effect of sudden shocks. It would be un-viable for them to totally factor the "unknown unknowns" into their everyday industrial architecture, (that's what insurance companies are for). Unless we take a positive decision to anticipate instability and design-it-out, there's a good chance we will find ourselves in more and more 'too-big-to-fail' scenarios, where government is forced to prop-up unready corporates.

Secondly, to quote Twain: "to a man with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail". Industry, society and the planning system have got used to viewing and operating in a certain way, its very hard to get them to lead on a new paradigm. If we do so, the eventual articulations of this when they do occur are likely to look rather different. The various stages of the ecosystem will be fragmented and separate, with none of the advantages (both economic and social) that accrue from taking an integrated approach.

And thirdly, of course, there is the 'Dubai' argument - building a new roof while the sun shines. While there are risks and costs to acting ahead of events, there are also quantifiable benefits to being anticipatory: not just in having a resilience to shocks, but also in that by developing knowledge before it is 'viable', the UK and Europe will have scaleable prototypes, developed, tested and ready to export when the first oil shocks roll in.

Cattle Farms The major by-product of the algaculture process can used as an organic, high-protein cattle feed, supporting 3200 head of cattle.

Biogas Harvesting An average cow may yield 500L of methane through enteric fermentation, and 50kg of slurry per day. The proposal is that as much of this should be harvested as possible (the former through air-controlled environments under the superstructure), yielding a huge amount of biogas, which is burnt to generate heat and electricity.

Programmatic Intensification The Farming superstructure can be modified and rented out as an expandable zone - supporting other server programmes (such as distribution).

Server Planning Agency The belt forms an ex-urban productive landscape. Construction within the belt is not regulated by local planning authorities, but is managed through a unique planning model within the server belt, which can be broadly understood as being more liberal in terms of spatial constraints, but more draconian in terms of waste and consumption.

Experimental Agriculture Zones Along the fringes of the belt, micro-farming areas. These are serviced by 'land-scanners', a plug-and-play operated gantry farming system which enables 'knowledge-intensive' farming: mixed-cropping, rotation farming, and even mechanical tools such as weeding. In effect: they become laboratories for the principles of permaculture to be applied on a larger scale (acres per farmer).

1-1 Museum All programmes broadcast on short-range FM. These frequencies can be tuned according to users' level of expertise.

Watford Gap Service Area The ability to farm mobility rather than mine it, essentially debunks the idea of 'food miles' - allowing us to redefine what we mean by 'local'.

Generosity Since programme is generated by available resources, industrial, culture and leisure programmes become indistinguishable. In this case, excess heat from CHP units provides enough heat for indoor growing, palm houses and a swimming pool on the fuel field.

Shoot The field is designed to absorb, rather than destroy ground-conitions. Shooting posts above the field are designed such that steps can be easily negotiated by gundogs.

To download a pdf of the project from Building Design Magazine, click here. 

* For more about the food system, check out Hungry City, by Carolyn Steel.