Intermediary gardens. SCDL (Research and development station for vegetables growing Buzău) modernization and transformation through Z Farming

Authors’ Comment

The site is located in the eastern part of the city of Buzău, boarded on 3 sides by 2 main roads of the city and 1 pedestrian way leading to a sequence of public facilities and towards the second largest park of the city. It is heavily boarded on two sides by two continuous fronts of collective housing buildings, while the other two sides remain open one towards a main street, one towards the agrarian fields.

Today, the site is the property and working space of SCDL Buzau, a renowned station for vegetables growing study.

The project aims to use the main activity of the Station, vegetable reserach, development and growing, as a factor to create a strong sustainable nucleus in the city through Z farming and urban farming.

On the site, the park is invited to make its way through it, creating the link between the urban fabric of individual and collective housing with the natural fabric of the agrarian fields and the parks. The attitude towards the N-E front of blocks is negotiated by the urban farming fields, which act as a spatial buffer between the laboratory area and the housing units. Its inhabitants are invited through a curtain of trees to cultivate the land and reap its bearing under the guidance of the scientists of the Station. By these blocks is located also the technical access.

In the southern part is the market, which offers the locals a place to buy and sell healthy fruits and vegetables, either grown on the site or brought there.

Towards the Mesteacanului street, the access is freely along the whole edge of the site and invites people on the site through the rare species trees park.
The center of the site is represented by the laboratories, “the heart” of the whole project, which sustains all the activities held on the site, cares for all the plants and constantly develops species and techniques to better fulfill the environmental demands of today’s changing climate. There are more techniques of growing plants: horizontal farm, horizontal greenhouse, vertical farming, experimental greenhouses farming, urban farming, conveyor-chains greenhouses and others.

The upper part represents a campus which invites researchers around the country and the world to join the scientists in their journey of researching plants and developping new species and techniques.

The complex uses means of conserving and generating alternative energy: all the opaque roofs facing S-E are equipped with PV panels and the hipped shape of the roofs allow for rainwater collection in an accumulation lake and in underground collector basins.

Around, the blindwalls of the blocks are provided with a vertical garden on scaffolding systems for pollinators to thrive and their roofs are invited to be transformed in rooftop gardens.