argument/parti01**

**UPDATE**

Since this scheme is based entirely on technological solutions, my next goal will be to develop a strategy that relies on low-tech solutions. The final design will, I'm sure, incorporate elements of both.

Also, the use on shipping containers in the above scheme received some negative criticism from my peers. While I still think there is still rich potential in the idea, it is equally important for me to discover the modular solution (based on performance capabilities) and not impose an a priori solution based on "the whim of the architect."

As I am using the two-fold definition of yield as a framework for understanding architecture, it seems to make sense to split the problems associated with agriculture in two as well. Thus, the active understanding of yielding architecture, which is concerned with performative capabilities, will use the problems of food supply as a test case. Currently, mass hunger and malnutrition results from an amazingly complex web of factors including (but certainly not limited to) government subsidies (Farm Bill), limited amounts of arable land and water, rapidly increasing demands for bio-fuel, and production efficiency ceilings. Additional considerations must also include the enormous environmental impacts of agriculture, the runoff from which is the primary culprit in the many chemicals polluting the world's water systems.

Alternatively,  yield can also suggest the need for an emergent, evolutionary architecture. Here, the cultural and social problems associated with agriculture provide an interesting opportunity for applying yield as an architectural methodology. It is no coincidence that organized governmental rule surfaced simultaneously with agriculture. An economy that produces surplus must have a means of controlling the distribution of that surplus. It is also not coincidental that it was the ability to produce surpluses that allowed for a non-working, ruling class to emerge. Thus, inherent in any agricultural society is a top-down, bureaucratic system that serves not the interests of the ruled many, but of the ruling few.

Detailed in the above diagram, this first architectural proposal consists of establishing a literal and conceptual framework, within which multiple configurations may exist. Shipping containers are used to create growing and living pods, each of which can be individually owned and operated, allowing for the demands of the inhabitants (vegetal and human) to determine the organization of the building. Neighborhoods and districts would evolve over time as like people moved their pods near each others. Similarly, people who enjoy certain types of food will see to it that the are located near pods growing their favorite crops. The containers themselves can be self-edited and combined and are allowed to be relocated through use of a permanent crane structure attached to the roof of the structure. The end result of this "vague design" is a place whose character and authority is generated from bottom-up, grassroots efforts, not authoritative master planning imposed from by a self-serving bureaucracy.

The pods would be serviced through a vertical core of pipes supplying water (nutrient-enriched in each pod for optimal plant growth) and electricity as well as for returning human waste and non-edible biomass for energy generation. The lower level consists of a collection and redistribution center, which takes on both performative and cultural roles. While gathering, filtering, and redistributing water and energy throughout the building, the lower levels also contain museum spaces, grocery stores, farmer's markets and restaurants, which collect/gather people while simultaneously distributing both food and knowledge.

Some of the technologies required for these cyclical and sustainable systems have been discovered by Dr. Dickson Despommier, who's research on vertical farms has produced wonderfully rich potentials for not only the construction/operation of vertical farms, but also their economic and political viability. The below image catalogues the technologies employed in one of his proposed vertical farm designs.