A strategy for constructing a sustainable community is the creation of an urban farm, colloquially regarded in Detroit as the ‘Agrihood’. Billboards and hoardings are worthy of architectural attention. Brush Park Agrihood, set in Detroit, reimagines the potential for hoardings and billboards by deploying them in the construction industry. The work draws inspiration from Venturi’s Learning from Las Vegas which describes a city predicated on signage and advertisements. The pictorial content painted onto the project’s hoardings advocates the need for a sustainable future for Detroit. In addition, the hoardings stage moments in the storyline of the construction of a new urban farm community moving onto a once-thriving district. The hoardings of the site become a framework for inhabitable spaces that inevitably spill out into the backlands of the site, thereby providing allotment space for its residents.

Unlike conventional hoardings, the Agrihood’s infographics and community messages are retained for eternity as they are embedded within the framework of the building, thus signifying the importance of Detroit’s environmental crises. The work also draws inspiration from muralist Diego Rivera and the art of the cutaway drawing. These particular drawing styles were developed to realise and project complex environmental messages.