Upper Post Veterans Farm - USA

One of the ways to recycle resources is to repurpose whatever that item might be for a new purpose. Instead of sending things into landfills or waiting until there is not a choice except for the expensive relocation of materials for deconstruction, planning for the reuse of equipment or supplies begins prior to their purchase. Loss of land to residential development is terminal. Once the infrastructure is laid and the houses are built with concrete foundations, that land can likely never be used for anything else again. Few developments were anything but a farm field in their history. Golf courses many times were also farm fields that were turned into a very large recreational space for leisure activities. An extreme number of golf courses at this time had been losing money and closing. Transitioning these golf courses to a farm is seen by many as a waste of land. What they forget is, a golf course was originally a farm. It was producing crops for people, grazing for beef or dairy, or even possibly a wetland filled for the purposes of fairways.

This present design is our transition plan taking a closed golf course near a VA Hospital and turning it into a residential agrarian community for disabled veterans. It would be transitional housing. It would have therapy by animals and by farm activities. It has a health and physical therapy facility. Primarily the purpose of this farm is to relieve the stress on disabled veterans and allow them to transition their lives be fruitful and fulfilling. 

A small section of the land is a training farm for on-site and off-site participants. Once trained those new farmers go on to work in the production fields of the farm with livestock, a nursery, greenhouses, field crops, syllable pasture, and also caring for the landscape of the residential area. 

The firm also supplies food to the local community and contributes to the economic development of small businesses. With the fragmentation of the food supply system in the United States, intensive small production farms creating high-value crops for the local community also contribute to the local economy. It renews the purpose of the land to serve a multitude of people rather than a privileged few.