brief

As a team project to design a low-cost practical solution to revitalize and beautify alleyways I worked with my colleagues Wes Kinkof and Hassib Jordan and members of a community in San José, Ca., we designed a way for people to gather and create a safer neighborhood.

Problem 

Community members emphasized that the degradation of the alleyways was a major area of concert. (Below)

brainstorming with the community 

We helped generate ideas with people in the community to develop a solution that leverages the alleyways as vertical gardening space.

concept GENERATION + prototype

Low-cost solutions were critical to implementation. Concepts were based on reused materials from within the neighborhood / local factories like crates, tires, burlap etc.
 

With the communities interest, we decided to purse a concept that was based on a vertical garden that had silt openings for plants.

aesthetic DEVELOPMENT

One of the major contributions I had on this project was to design the visual language of the slits that would house the plant pockets.

The build

Materials consisted of an up-cycled pallet as the framing, rain gutters for soil containers, a circulating water system via a solar powered pump and two buckets as a water reservoir.

Vert provides a low cost solution ($150) to beautifying alleyways and can grow providing herbs and vegetables for a community. This design can be easily elongated by adding more pallets to create a patterned wall.