Playful AQUAFARMING
The Tirana River is a river that crosses the northern part of Tirana, in the area called "Bregu i Lumit". It forms the northern administrative border of Tirana and divides it from Paskuqan Municipality. The Tirana River is formed by the merging of mountain streams in Zall Dajt. Its stream is clean up to the "Shkalla e Tujanit" and the village of Brar. In its upper stream, the river has a clear stream, with crystalline waters and rich water worlds. Among the species to be mentioned, is the freshwater crab, Potamon fluviatile. After the village of Brar, the Tirana River waters are largely polluted by wastewater, waste and various solid and liquid waste from both sides of the river banks.
The destruction of the Tirana River ecosystem is further deepened by the discharge of solid waste into the river, narrowing and destroying the banks and the river bed, and turning the river into a simple sewerage channel.
Solid brigade shores have been exploited for various illegal constructions, which have taken all the roads to go to the river and have destroyed the river's flow. As a result of pollution, the biological diversity of the river is greatly reduced by eliminating fish, non-target species, and other aquatic organisms. The only survivors that survive in the lower stream of Tirana River are algae and rats of canals.They don't treat that lake part as a landmark, a meeting point or any other potential it may have, but they treat it only as a waste landfill. First of all we must look for a possibility of cleaning the lake, in order for the biodiversity to live there.
So the first important point of the project according to me will be:" The river flow rehabilitation ".
The river of Tirana is also facing the problem of the water pollution, the air pollution, garbage, infrastructural problems, architectural issues, informal buildings, etc.
The pollution is a very harmful problem that effects the nature and the people in the same time. It becomes cause of many problems in the nature like the acidic rain and in the human health the decrease in quality of air leads to several respiratory problems including asthma or lung cancer.From our site visit, another problem of that site was infrastructure. The lake divides Paskuqan from Tirana not only physically but also creates a gap in other fields. It also has an impact in society in their education, discrimination, in their life activities, their houses etc. For many people that live in Tirana,
Paskuqan is a border, a limit. It has only one car road and it is an one-way road.
It is a very old bridge and it has a very small pedestrian part that makes the access even worse. But it is the only road in the area. If people want to cross from one part to another, the river now creates a physical barrier in all means. This crisis in my opinion brought this seperation in peoples mind and their lifestyle. Discrimination starts from within them and it is spread beyond that lake barrier.
From our site visit and the analysis we noticed that there is no sign of a social life, no pedestrian lake paths, no theatre, no cinema, nothing that in a cultural aspect would make their lifes better and would make them stay in that site. The only reason they choose that place for living was the wide spread informality that made it easier for them to get a land and take profit of it. So the third crisis we would thought of taking in consideration is arranging of some cultural activities that also would have impact in the economical aspect.They "have choosen" to live in a agriculture land that has a lot of space for their economical activities but instead they neglect it.
Our generation has been given the urgent task of reversing the damages of industrial civilization and overcoming perhaps the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced uniting as one conscious, sustainable force to secure the stability of our future environmentally and socially so we cannot continue living off the wealth of future generations without condemning ourselves and the basis of our civilization in the process. The environmental movement, with over one million environmental, social justice, and indigenous organizations present, is the fastest growing movement on Earth.
“Poverty, brothers, is a mouthful that's hard to swallow,
A bite that sticks in your throat and leaves you in sorrow,
When you watch the pale faces and rheumy eyes
Observing you like ghosts and holding out thin hands;
Behind you they lie, stretched out
Their whole lives through, until the moment of death…”
This poem was writtenin the 1930s by Migjeni, a very well-known Albanian writer. Today, nearlya century later, they still reflect reality in rural Albanian villages, like Librazhd.
Another crisis that I think is a very important is the Concentrated poverty. For that part of the city was obvious. Albania, located on the Mediterranean Sea across from southern Italy, is one of the poorest countries in Europe. Why is Albania poor, though? It is important to discuss not only the causes of poverty in Albania, but also the standards for poverty in Albania.
After pointing out the crisis : "The high pollution ", "The un-used land", "The lack of social activities", "The difficulties in infrastructure "- it was important for us to create a "technology" that at the same time would improve their life quality, but also would create some land marks in the area.
For this case we took in consideration two different case studies.
Sky Farm / VRAP
The history of traditional rural settlements in China demonstrates how Chinese agricultural techniques have evolved. These traditional rural construction works, led by small-scale peasant economies, are multi-field and trans-scale projects that have admirably integrated geography, irrigation works and agriculture. This type of production-promoting compound construction has captured our attention and we have dubbed it “agritectonic”.
In late 2015, Vernacular Research and Practice (VRAP) began to apply the concept of agri-tectonic to a number of micro-projects. With “agriculture inclusive urbanism”, a means to realize urban renewal, we try to find the possibility of agriculture feeding cities by designing an experimental model. “Sky Farm”, located in a village in Nantou in Shenzhen, is one of these projects that emphasizes production-promoting compound public space in an urban village.
In Shenzhen, around 10 percent of the land is covered by urban villages that accommodate nearly 50 percent of the city’s population. These urban villages exist as a special form in urban space where small-scale peasant economy is mixed with small-scale industries and where constructions are designed to potentially be inte-grated closely with local settlements. For urban villages that lack public space, Sky Farm is an iterative product that can transform cheap residential space into effective production space and unique consumer space, which is why Sky Farm is so suitable for the new urban village economy.
At a reasonable cost, Sky Farm can provide a highly productive space and thus help achieve the maximum promotion effect possible. PVC, easy to obtain in urban villages, has been chosen as the main material. Also, a standardized structure featuring convenient dismantling and transportation processes has been applied so that the device can be built even by ordinary people. On four sides of the device are farming nets for climbing vines with relatively large meshes to make space for plants and fruits while an anti-bird net is placed on the top for fruit protection and rain water collection.
Through a low-pressure water pump, “nutrient water with fish excrement” from those black boxes can be recycled to water and fertilize the plants. In this manner, a Sky Farm covering 400 square meters operates with extremely low cost, land occupation and maintenance. It is estimated that in a summer, Sky Farm is able to collect 300 tons of rain water, breed more than 200 fish and produce more than 200 jin (400 kilograms) of vegetables or fruits (cucumber has been taken as a test example).Sky farm, with its treillage capable of resizing as required, can be built on rooftops, in streets or in any available space that’s larger than 1.5 square meters, making it a veritable “mobile farm”. As for the structure of this device, its lower part is designed to leave maximum space for public use while its upper part opens maximum space for plant proliferation.
These Floating Farms Could Be Key to Feeding Future Populations
The Barcelona firm’s design comprises a multi-level agricultural barge that can be constructed, pushed out to sea, and left to work mostly on its own. The farm is designed to operate on three levels: - a bottom level containing wave barriers, an aquaculture fish farm,
- a slaughterhouse,
- a packing facility and desalination plant; a second tier for hydroponic and aeroponic food production;
and a rooftop level featuring skylights to let in light and photovoltaics to provide the energy required to power everything.
At 656 by 1,150 feet , each level is approximately 750,000 square feet - enough room to grow up to 8.1 tons of vegetables and 1.7 tons of fish per year. The architects estimate that this would cover the project’s expenses within 10 years. And since the farms are modular, a few or many of these structures could be grouped together to provide enough food for entire communities, especially those located in areas without arable land, or with a population so large it overwhelms its food supply capabilities. And unlike other forward-thinking agricultural techniques like urban farming, it spares valuable land space for other types of construction.
As well as making the farming process autonomous, putting the structures on top of the water allows the farms to adapt to rising water levels and avoid flooding issues common to traditional agricultural techniques. While this strategy may seem outlandish to the uninitiated, it actually has a long and successful pedigree, having been employed for centuries by Bengali farmers to react to dramatic changes in water level during flood seasons. The farmers construct beds in lakes and rivers using several layers of bamboo and water hyacinth, fill them with semi-decomposed aquatic plants and then seed. The beds are tethered to the lakebed to prevent them from floating away. This has resulted in production rates up to 10 times more fruitful than neighboring land-based practices.
However, the true innovation of the Smart Floating Farms project is taking non-traditional farming techniques and combining them with already-existing technologies.
The world population is predicted to grow from 6.9 billion in 2010 to 8.3 billion in 2030 and to 9.1 billion in 2050. By 2030, food demand is predicted to increase by 50% (70% by 2050). The main challenge facing the agricultural sector is not so much growing 70% more food in 40 years, but making 70% more food available on the plate, and to react to these daunting figures, new agricultural techniques must be developed.
As the architects acknowledge in their design statement, the project “is not meant to solve all of humanity’s hunger problems or to replace existing traditional agriculture. The driver behind the project is to open a new initiative which can be complementary and compatible with other existing production methods in order to help reduce food risk associated problems in different areas of the globe.” One project alone will not save the world, but embracing the technologies available to us is a great start towards tackling these issues. If only it were as easy as the touch of a button.
To conclude, what we propose is a new technology that would fix all the problem of pollution with the lower part that would be on the lake and it would provide the water filtring in order for the biodiversity to grow again .
In the second level would be the imposed creatures that will live there, as fish.
As a second layer will be the agriculture farming providing food for the residents, and why not in the future for trading.
And as a third upper layer would be the net that will collect the rain water and filter it for the lower part but also in a good weather condition with a small movable stairs will provide fresh relaxing areas for the citizens.
These structures will be settled in a way that they will also provide passage for the residents and playful areas to make them gather there for different activities.
In the other hand these stuctures are thought to be inflatable that in rainy condition they will overflow to create a tend like stucture for the people passing in the area. But why not in the hot weather to provide shading and make it a good spot for people to sit and enjoy the lake.
By: Arselda Brahimi
Ketjona Lleshaj
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