Above: the CAR:park project took the roof off a car and filled it with plants

In the movie, Something & Son present a selection of their projects at the Pecha Kucha event at our Designed in Hackney Day in August, telling the audience about their ongoing investigation into urban agriculture and the relationship between nature and cities.

Above: homes for migrating swifts

Designer Andrew Merritt begins by introducing CAR:park, a project that explored "how the city would be if cars no longer existed" by rescuing a car that was due to be scrapped, removing its roof and filling it with plants and a pond.

Above: the FARM:shop project to grow fish, chickens and vegetables in the city

The pair also created homes for migrating swifts inside a huge raised circle designed to look like the setting sun. "The colour layout helps them find their homes, because they've got high spectrum vision," Merritt explains.

Above: FARM:shop

The FARM:shop project saw them take over an empty building in east London to create an urban farm, with vegetables and plants growing indoors alongside tanks of fish, while chickens were kept on the roof. "We're going through a big learning journey around how you can grow food in the city and how can you create a sustainable business model to sell that food," says Paul Smyth, the other half of the duo.

Above: FARM:shop project

"Through that we met loads of people who are also passionate about growing food, and we got into a geeky zone of really trying to understand it and work on it," he added.

Above: the Rotten Compost Tea Bar serving tea brewed with heat from compost

They also set up the Rotten Compost Tea Bar at the V&A museum in London, brewing tea with heat from a compost heap and serving it in test tubes. "By wrapping a heat exchange through the compost heap you can get temperatures up to 40, 50 or 60 degrees even, if you get it just right," says Smyth.

Above: the Rotten Compost Tea Bar

In Korea they learned about aeroponics, a cultivation system that feeds plants by misting them from underneath. "We designed a building, or structure, that you walk into from underneath, and you come into this cave-like structure with the roots hanging above your head," Merritt explains.

Above: a 3D printed lamp homemade with glue guns and sand

They also attempted their own homemade version of 3D printing, using glue guns and sand to painstakingly create a lamp from separate layers of glue. "There's a certain amount of trial and error," Merritt admits.

Above: a community project representing local people with trees

A project in north London saw the pair working with local people to create a diagram of social capital, in which one tree represents each participant. Trees with many branches indicate those who have the most connections with their neighbours, while tall trees show the people who've lived in the area the longest.

Above: drawings for Barking Bathhouse

Finally they introduce Barking Bathhouse, a temporary spa in east London which contains a series of treatment rooms, including a sauna and a cool room filled with dry ice. "It's our first bit of actual architecture," says Merritt.

Above: Barking Bathhouse

Designed in Hackney is a Dezeen initiative to show off the best architecture and design created in the borough, which was one of the five host boroughs for the London 2012 Olympic Games as well as being home to Dezeen’s offices.

Above: Barking Bathhouse

Watch more movies from our Designed in Hackney Day or see more stories about design and architecture from Hackney.

The post "We got into a geeky zone trying to understand urban agriculture" – Something & Son appeared first on Dezeen.

Faeces, electric eels and fruit would power conceptual communities designed by Bartlett School of Architecture graduate Catrina Stewart.

The City Farmhouse project proposes housing communities on stilts above clusters of public toilets, where visitors would be required to donate faeces and urine on arrival.

Electricity would be generated from methane gas released when the harvested excrement is broken down.

Faeces and urine could also be used to produce compost and water for community gardens.

Streetlights would be powered by fruit acid and elevators would be powered by electric eels, kept as pets by residents.

In 2009 Dutch designers Tjep designed a series of self-sufficient farms that reuse waste and could be scaled to accommodate a single inhabitant, a small community or an amusement park.

Other recent architecture graduate projects include an upside-down skyscraper and a tower that shoots artificial bees into the air - see all our stories about this years graduate shows here.

Here are some more details from Catrina Stewart:

London City Farmhouse

The City Farmhouse project is a prototype that looks at forming new self-sufficient communities, which integrate agriculture and housing within the city of London.

The Farmhouses and vertical colour gardens will be open to the public, and will rely on its colours and visitors to achieve self-sufficiency.

Visitors and residents will be expected to make a donation of faeces and urine when they visit the building. These will be used to produce water, compost and electricity for the Farmhouses. Methane gas released by the waste produced in biogas digesters can then be used directly or to produce electricity.

Without its public toilets the community would not be able to survive. The more visitors the building can attract the more power, food and water will be produced. New public toilets will be erected across the borough in order to collect human waste to power the Farmhouses. New communities will begin to grow around the more popular public toilets, creating new Farmhouses.

The Farmhouse project explores the use of colour to attract people to the building and entice them into using the public toilets by using the same principles used for colour in marketing and advertising. Colours are therefore used less for their aesthetics and more for their functional properties.

Nothing in the Farmhouse is disposed of, everything is recycled and reused to fuel something else.  Old and new technologies are used to harness energy and food from almost anything, animals are no longer used for their meat but rather as a source of energy.

Cows are farmed for their methane gas, electric eels are kept as pets to power the elevators in the building and fruits are used to to power the street lights.

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