EMMA STONE

The Growers Guild // Blackness, Dundee

If all usable land was cultivated within the city, Dundee could produce 35% of its own fruit and veg. But how? Dundee Local Food Growing Strategy, 2020

Located in the City of Dundee on the East Coast of Scotland, the Grower’s Guild seeks to create a new pilot typology for regenerative and caring community food growing. In response to Dundee City Council’s 2020 brief, the scheme sits a part of a wider city plan, Cultivate Dundee. Cultivate Dundee sees the implementation of multiple Grower’s Guild’s. Operated by a charitable organisation for the use of the local community, Guilds will act as neighbourhood catalysts for the production, processing and distribution of local food. My project, the Grower’s Guild Blackness, acts as the pilot scheme for citywide implementation.

By co-locating symbiotic uses alongside growing infrastructure, the scheme aims to decarbonise food production whilst also caring for wider community needs. The project therefore seeks to facilitate a just transition from extractive global food systems towards local, regenerative systems – implemented through an ethic of care

Sited in the ruins of the old Queen Victoria Jute Mills in the neighbourhood of Blackness, the proposal takes the form of a new walled garden. Within the existing grade B listed perimeter walls, sits a series of new-build and retrofitted buildings. Programmatically, these work together to form symbiotic relationships, creating a regenerative system for caring food production. Typologies include an Urban Farm, Community Centre, Post - Harvest processing, Live-Grow Cohousing, Natural Swimming Pool + Seed Saunas and Community Workshops.