Source: inhabitat.com
Published: January 27, 2016
by Ana Lisa
Cal Poly Pomona’s architecture students Kirill Volchinskiy, Hana Lemseffer and Necils Lopez have been working for more than a year on the design of an educational center for ‘Huerta del Valle’, a blooming community garden in greater Los Angeles. Located in Ontario and sitting on a former industrial wasteland, the garden is where locals meet, learn and grow their food to feed their families. The new learning center consists of a shipping container library, a rammed earth amphitheater, a kitchen, playhouse and storage space, to be built from funds raised through a Kickstarter campaign.
The amphitheater will be used for meetings and events and crafted from old tires and rammed earth, and the remaining soil will be used to make the kids’ library/classroom’s walls. The library will be topped by an array of solar panels that will power the garden with free energy from the sun. The kitchen and playhouse is designed from two shipping containers and there will also be a shaded structure for keeping garden tools and materials.
Huerta del Valle is a successful community garden that already feeds 62 low-income families and sustains itself by selling produce to local restaurants and at markets. In the next two years the garden will need to accommodate 124 families, and with this they will need new spaces. To meet the growing demand the students designed four low-impact, passive structures, each with its own sustainable strategy.
If you live locally and want to join, want to learn more or contribute, visit their Kickstarter campaign here.