Urban Farming Design in Los Angeles: An Adaptive Reuse Project in Response to Food Crisis and Housing Crisis

As the world population is constantly growing and will reach 9 billion people by 2050, the current danger to the world's food supply system creates a severe challenge. By 2050, more populations will be living in the cities and creating higher demand on food supply, but the farmable lands on our planet could be much less because of climate change and urbanization. Agricultural leaders have argued that cities will need to produce food internally to respond to demand by increasing population and to avoid harmful pollution and unaffordable food prices. Architecture, as the most influential element affecting our daily life, should react to this food crisis. Today, high-tech indoor farming systems have become more and more common and are easily accessible. It significantly increases the opportunity of growing food internally in the cities. This project will be proposing an architectural response to the food crisis and urban issues occurring now and in the future. The project will select proper indoor farming technology and its applications to implement on an abandoned hotel building. It will merge urban farms with support facilities for the local homeless population. The support will include general assistance, clinical treatment, farming education, and occupational therapy, reducing homelessness in this area. This project will predominantly focus on how farming and occupational therapy combine to improve sustainable urban living for both the general and homeless population in the Los Angeles metropolitan area.