Fair Trade Zone: Circular Economy as a Spatial Metabolism

Juergen Strohmayer, Low Density, Politics and economics, Project, Technology and fabrication, Urban Paradigms.

Circular economy, Project

The design of the Fair Trade Zone understands the circular economy as a spatial metabolism between architecture and landscape. Led by a women’s cooperative, the Fair Trade Zone in Akuse, Ghana is based on an alternative model for integrated sustainable manufacturing, agriculture, and eco-tourism in Ghana. While the raw materials processed in the built interior grow outdoors in productive gardens, the buildings harvest rainwater and nourish the plants with ecologically purified production wastewater through the courtyard’s drainage channels and gravity-fed furrow irrigation. The result is a striated landscape composed of different biomes suitable for the diverging ecological requirements of a dye garden, a paper garden, a textile garden, a skin care garden, and an energy garden. Interwoven into the productive terrain are a variety of spaces including modular indoor production rooms bordered by shaded outdoor circulation spaces that open onto courtyards and social spaces.