Urban landscape laboratory : a public industry for the research and development of rice and fisheries

Abstract

Landscape had significance to society once. The significance of these landscapes was associated with agronomic practices, a spiritual connection to nature, and a platform for social interaction within the community. To date, the sense of significance landscapes once had to human culture, has been lost. In the spirit of time, man has actively exiled himself from nature and its productive processes. This dissertation focuses on the adaptive reuse of an urban drosscape. The decommissioned Cotex Ltd. textile mill is located in a densely formed urban environment, where the process of de-industrialisation and rapid urbanisation has transformed the rural environment into an ever expanding informal settlement. The concept of a landscape machine represents the possibility to return a productive programme to a formerly functional and industrious land use, while at the same time reassuring that economic, social and ecological components establish in the urban setting. The concept of public industry becomes evident. The aim of the project is to design a productive landscape that functions between man, the remaining post-industrial relics of the textile mill and the urban landscape of Chumbuni. The design integrates the existing industrial heritage to feed new social and educational programmes through means of a productive landscape, which in turn will address urban issues and propose rehabilitation strategies for the area. The landscape intervention will act as a hybrid landscape, encouraging the exiled man to return to ‘nature’ and to research, as well as test, sustainable landscape machines which are appropriate and functional to the urban environment. The landscape design investigates the potential to integrate the agricultural and recreational experiences, in order to generate a new landscape typology for urban wastelands. The proposed programme celebrates the productive heritage of Zanzibar and incorporates this into the processes and experiences of crop cultivation, regional culture, social interaction and ecological development, as proposed products.