Adaptive Agriculture

New Productive Landscapes

South Weymouth, MA

Since European settlement, around 120 million acres of wetlands have been drained or filled in USA, which is more than what remains today, most of which was drained for agriculture. Meanwhile, a new large scale land pattern has begun to emerge, one of pavement and contamination. There is around 30 million acres of pavement in USA and growing daily. At the same time, population continues to grow while agricultural land continues to shrink.SOWEY is a product of all of these cultural land-use attitudes – most of it is built on filled wetlands, it contains 11 superfund sites, and is covered by vast amounts of impervious surfaces – making it an ideal site to research and become a model for adaptive agriculture. We have a need for adaptive agriculture, a new kind of productive landscape that responds to existing conditions – we must learn how to take these new “wastelands” we have created and once again transform them into productive sites.

GSD Studio | Fall 2009 Professors: Christian Werthmann, Pierre Bélanger, Jane Hutton Tools: Adobe CS, AutoCAD, GIS, SketchUp