Taste Buds
Design for Physical Spaces · Savannah, GA.
Community gardens for kids in low income communities
SCAD Secession 2019 Finalist
Insight
The food deserts in savannah take place where
the low income communities are located.
A community garden for kids from low income communities
to grow, learn & transform
Taste Buds is a communal space that seeks to provide an engaging learning experience for kids in low income communities. Most of these kids constantly loop in a cycle where their education and health gets compromised by external factors that they can not control. Through workshops, activities, and a safe space, we seek to empower kids about their future while strengthening the community’s relationships.
The project seeks to bridge the relationship between low income family’s kids and their eating habits. We want to teach them not only the importance of eating healthy but how to do it while growing their own food and having fun with friends. Taste Buds aims to nurture friendship and responsibility between the community’s kids while empowering them about their future.
The project relies on multiple stakeholders that help to maintain the project running. We have a community leader who takes care of the space daily and supervises that the space is being properly used and taken care of. The Community Buds are volunteers who visit the greenhouse twice to three times a week to helps with the crops and food processing activities. Mark from Farm Truck 912 visits us weekly to give classes on how to can, store and sale the produce.
Paula from Healthy Savannah helps to organize conferences and events with nutritionists, cooks and all types of professionals to share new knowledge with the community. Stephen from SUGA (Savannah Urban Gardening Association) supervises the whole program and makes sure that it is running the way it is meant to. Stephen is also in charge of bringing SCAD students and volunteers. The kids from the neighborhood are the main stakeholder, some visit after school and some others spend the day at the Greenhouse while their parents are working.
For more information about the context and research behind the project click here
Physical model of the playground/community garden
The space features big letter that spell EAT and can be used as a playground while providing the space to grow crops. The idea behind this design is to make it fun and interesting for kids to learn about growing your own products and how to consume them afterwards.
FUN NARRATIVES & CHARACTERS
Tom Tomato, Carol Carrot, Bob Broccoli and Berry Strawberry are the characters in charge of taking the kids thru the garden and teaching them all the important information about how to take care of each crop, why is it nutritious and how they can consume it to improve their health.
Digital model
A digital model was designed using SketchUp to further explain the concept and ideas behind each of the elements that build the community space proposed. The space is located in Savannah, Georgia on E34th Street. Currently, there’s a community garden there that was intended to provide the low-income community of the zone a place to grow their products. The project failed due to the lack of interest from the community and the feeling that the place was not designed for them. This new proposal takes that into account and approaches it by inviting the kids to a fun learning space so that they are the ones who take the learnings to their homes.
THE GREENHOUSE
The greenhouse furniture adapts to the community needs by being easy to move and transform depending on the event.
This is a space for meetings, classes, movie shows, product processing and any type of need that the community has.
THE PLAYGROUND & KITCHEN
The kitchen is an educational space to learn about the produce, how to cook each product and techniques on how to store and can the produce. It the small shed house located next to the green house in the models. The playground combines fun letter shapes with the crops and colorful items to bridge the fear that kids feel about getting involved with the crops. The playground is the main piece of the proposal and seeks to be the focal point of the space and where most of the interactions take place.
Fun Narratives displayed around the garden
My name is Carol Carrot and Tom Tomato is my taste buddy. We love doing things together like homework, cooking and taking care of our crops. Being friends for all this time has taught us that growing together makes us grow better. Join us in this adventure and meet all of our friends!
Carol Carrot loves all seasons, that’s why you can see her around the garden throughout the year. Growing her is easy! The first thing you need to do is organize the seeds. Just be sure to place the seeds 3 inches away from each other while making organized rows that are an inch away from each other. Like this (illustration). Once you have placed the seeds you are done! Make sure to keep the soil moist so that she can slowly grow and germinate. It can take 3 or more weeks for you to start seeing Carol’s hair grow, be patient!
Special thanks to everyone that contributed to the development of this project: Professors Joseph DiGioia & Scott Boylston, Mark Bowen from Farm Truck 912, Paula Kreissler from Healthy Savannah, Steve Langford from SUGA, and my classmates and friends: Eric Shumate, Maria Adelaida Marquez, and Lindsey Peterson.