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Outdoor protection from overhead predators

The AC+D Program begins with a 10 day collaborative Design Build Intensive intended to help students learn how to work together and to design and make something for someone that could benefit from our skills.

 

MAKING A DIFFERENCE THROUGH MAKING

Designers in education and industry routinely and assuredly assert that design thinking strategies can deliver the “game-changing” ideas needed to address the critical and complex problems of our times. Frequently, however, it seems we’re seduced by and fall in love with the promise(s) of these ideas – and possibly the god-like power their creation conveys – and are less committed to following through with their actual realization with the same degree of passion.

In an effort to provide a ‘proof of the pudding is in the eating’ model of design education and practice, first year MFA AC+D students begin the program with a pre-semester, 10-day collaborative design-build intensive. The experience is intended to help students get to know each other, and learn how to work together by designing and building a project for an actual client. Emphasizing a philosophy of civic engagement, projects are selected based on their potential to benefit an organization or population that generally does not have access to and/or cannot afford to pay for the services of designers and makers.

 

Project Grow provides a space for artists to explore personal expression through an array of artistic mediums, as well as gain skill and experience working on a chemical-free farm with an emphasis on sustainability.

 

The urban farm's focus is to teach individuals farm skills and encourage a connection to their food source as they earn income from farming the land. Port City farmers cultivate reclaimed urban land spread across two blocks. The list of produce grown on the farm is bountiful and includes many varieties of vegetables, Northwest proven tomatoes, and other fruits such as raspberries, mulberries, blueberries, pears, kiwis, apples, currants, figs and grapes. In order to make our farm more sustainable and encourage understanding of the full cycle of plant life, we save our seeds and sell and trade them with community members and other local farms.

 

Goats and chickens are raised to teach individuals animal husbandry skills. The goats' beautiful fiber is processed and used for weaving, felting and other fiber projects. We also cultivate many plants used to make natural dyes, and encourage seed to cloth creation of fiber goods.

 

North Portland Farm produce is sold throughout the community. All of the chemical-free produce raised by Port City farmers is sold to restaurants, neighborhood stores, or as Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) shares.

 

Photographs by Marissa Boone

Digital fabrication by FARMM at the McGill School of Architecture for the ContemPLAY Pavilion.

This is just before the concrete spilled everywhere when we poured the foundations for our house...

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