Oakdene Forest farm is a seven acre slice of river flat in New Zealand’s Bay of Plenty. The application of living process to the homestead gardens has been written up in some detail here here is a video explaining the early stages of the process:
and here’s a slide show doing the same:
- Okay so we started with all stakeholders and extended family sharing what they wanted to be true of the larger Oakdene Forest Farm property
- Dan's mum and dad then articulated this stated purpose, why statement, or joint intention for the place
- We also started going into and discussing and clarifying and winnowing and refining their 'wishlist'
- In which process four primary areas emerged
- Let's now get oriented to the place. Over time its use had differentiated itself into three main sub-areas.
- Let's focus in on farm central...
- Which in turn was already comprised of two main areas...
- ...and a third little area where they overlapped...
- Now there was an existing creek...
- ...a barn mum and dad had erected...
- The drive way they'd put in to their barn and house site...
- Some trees we'd planted around the outside...
- An orchard we'd started calling the communal orchard...
- A few little cabins for guests
- A 'lake' (technically a big hole for now) - were an unsupervised digger driver had struggled to get through the huge amount of topsoil to get enough subsoil to make a raised mound for the house
- and a house!
- In terms of the four area we wanted to better define, there was already a central village-greeny area in the middle...
- a barn-utility area...
- a bush-campy area
- and an around-the-house area
- Here those areas are combined with existing site features and desires things in the different areas
- Looking to the left
- and the right
- Now we made a to-scale basemap
- We considered sectors
- Existing access flows (both type and frequency)
- Views wanted and not wanted
- Culminating in a map of the different areas across the site
- Here we are hard at it!
- Now design started