PARKLANDS & URBAN PUBLIC REALM

VIET VILLAGE URBAN FARM

Viet Village Urban Farm is an urban farming project located in New Orleans East, an area devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The design team assisted the community with the design of environmental infrastructural systems to support an organic urban farming operation, including a market area to serve as a community resource and economic catalyst and the development of a flexible, strategic plan for project funding and incorporating various labour resources.

Landscape Principles in Practice:

• Value Our Landscape:  Design responds to historic physical and cultural characteristics of the local landscape, proposing environmentally respectful processes and management strategies to restore and enhance economic, social and environmental site functionality. 
• Protect – Enhance – Regenerate:  Decision-making hierarchy focused on protection and enhancement of landscape functionality via prioritising establishment of a sustainable on-site water management system.  This will underpin future regeneration of productive landscape capacity, with enhanced resilience to extreme weather events.
• Design with Respect: Design layout responds to existing site context and cultural history, incorporating sustainable landscape strategies such as flexible funding and implementation options, organic agricultural production at a range of scales, energy efficient design, on-site water management and waste recycling.
• Design for the Future:  Design proposes new ways of adapting to potential impacts of climate change, such as extreme weather events, to enhance social, economic and environmental resilience within the built environment.
• Embrace Responsive Design:  Collaborative, community-based approaches to landscape analysis and planning enhance potential for innovative and creative design responses to changing social and environmental conditions.

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