Introduction

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The exceptional Indian chef, author, and actor Madhur Jaffrey once observed that as she got older the land beckoned to her more. But for me that beckoning is not only a return to the land as a farmer but an experience of the land via my 40-plus years as an architect. I have over the past 20-years and through these overlapping experiences, created an energy-saving technology that can enable farming as an instrument of climate change mitigation, a solution that can be at the heart of resilient communities, and an instrument for the re-localization of food production, new-economy job-creation, and healthy diets. I believe if we carefully observe the systems and possibilities of nature, nature can inform new technologies that better serve the world. Project Ninety10 is a real-world manifestation of those ideas. It proposes a 90% reduction in four-season farming energy use and land use, and the full integration of net-zero energy and carbon positive building systems based on green energy. Located on a farm in the Hudson Valley, and comprising a greenhouse on 30-acres of rewilded forest, it has been, to date, both a demonstrated success and an ongoing experiment, and these writings will those experiences.

 

So: I believe that in the future children can be nourished from their healthy local farms based-on what we do on our farms now.

 

“These fragments I have shored against my ruins.” T.S. Eliot, “The Wasteland”