The Almono Greens Complex project is situated on parcels 61-64 in the flats district of the Almono site, Pittsburgh, in close proximity to the Hazelwood neighborhood.
After studying the Almono site and its relationship with the adjacent neighborhoods, the factory and housing are used as a means to create a more direct connection between the residents and the vacant lands.
The research is structured under the three categories of:
(1) Extractive Materiality, (2) Bio/Earthen Materiality, (3) Hemp Materiality.
This research deepens our understanding of the unsustainable status quo for material and construction while revealing the emerging potential of regenerative and environmentally sensitive materials.
Using the preceding phase of research as a basis, our team outlined a set of priorities and motivations that situate our work within the overarching theme of the studio. The process yields a series of questions that are informed by the constraints of place, program, and material process.
Through confronting the non-extraction, urban agricultural practices, and bio-based materiality, this process will lay the groundwork for the conceptual basis of the project and therefore must be given ample attention.
The directionality and spacings of the complex are inspired and guided by the rows of the farmland, which are structured through a language of hempcrete walls flowing from the neighborhood to the river. Occupiable spaces are inserted in between the hempcrete walls, and that relationship stays throughout the whole complex.
The hempcrete walls are 3’ thick and are built slightly taller than the occupiable spaces to create a sense of monumentality and strengthen the insertion relationship between the walls and the occupiable spaces.
The factory serves as a generator for harvested hemp products to be transformed into building materials, which are then delivered down the parcels to build housings directly adjacent to them. The site strategy elaborates on the concept of Urban Farming, which is the practice of cultivating, processing, and distributing harvests in or around urban areas.
By placing the farm, the factory, and the housing in close proximity to each other, the connection is strengthened between the parts to the whole system, as well as the flow of materials throughout this complex.
