Parckfarm

RESEARCH BACKGROUND: Parckfarm was an interactive project that allowed visitors to explore new park typologies through art installations, agricultural performances, workshops and community gardens. A project by Taktyk - the landscape architectural practice of Thierry Kandjee and Sebastien Penfornis - in collaboration with Alive Architecture, it was originally created for the 2014 Parckdesign Festival in Brussels. Initially planned to run for five months, the Parckfarm project was so successful that it has since become permanent. RESEARCH CONTRIBUTION: Parckfarm was a strategic design response to Thurn & Taxis - an industrial warehouse site which the researchers considered as a spatial, social and economic border condition. They worked closely with local artists, farmers and international designers to co-produce a new model of public space that combined the characteristics of a regional park with local micro-farming. The project represented a new approach to initiatives involving spontaneous participation that forced organizers to let go of traditional design ideas. Parckfarm demonstrates Kandjee's ongoing investigation into curation as a form of design practice, and the public role of his practice where he acts as a gardener, urbanist, orchestrator and enabler of complex transformational processes. RESEARCH SIGNIFICANCE: Parckfarm was selected for presentation at the 2016 International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR) and featured in its exhibition catalogue. In 2015, the project won the Public Space Prize in Belgium, presented by the Antwerp-based Public Space Infopoint to the best public space project in Brussels or Flanders. In 2012, Taktyk won the 2012 Topos Landscape Award by the journal Topos to recognise the practice's contribution to contemporary landscape architecture. Parckfarm has been extensively published in Landscape Architecture Australia, Architecture Australia, Landezine, and various European media outlets.