Agritecture by Andrew Naylor

AGRITECTURE

F O O D

& F O R M

ANDREW NAYLOR LARC* 4340

28 / 11 / 13 A D V I S O R : N AT E P E R K I N S

Welcome!

TABLE of

CONTENTS

ABSTRACT FARM TO FORK ORIGINS MODERN FARM FOOD AND ART

FOOD FOR THE FUTURE NEW URBANISM MODERN FARM FOOD AND ART

DESIGN THAT FARMS IS AWARE IS SEXY IS ALIVE

REFRENCES

ABSTRACT Food, its production, processing, and consumption, has a strong influence on design. Urban design, landscape architecture, art, all of these are molded by food and the cultural atmosphere that revolves around it. Traditionally our relationship with our food has been a close one, with most of our populace engaged in agrarian practices or at least conscious of itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s origins. Over time we have become disconnected from our food however, especially with the rise of an industrial food system that lacks transparency, and has separated our farms and cities more than history has ever seen. The manifestation of our disconnection with food in design is a problem, as the lack of awareness of our food and its origins leads to designs that support a unsustainable global food network, and leads to designs that support a parasitic relationship between consumers and the environment, failing to foster a narrative of reciprocation between people and the earth that sustains them. I will examine how design, in its myriad manifestations, can strengthen the relationship between people and their food. I will investigate the role of the farm in history and see how we might redefine the traditional farm to integrate with the modern day cultural and urban context, in a way that alleviates the problems that have arisen from our current relationship. Understanding how the currents of food and society influence design, and vice versa, can ensure we move forward into a future that makes our lives more sustainable, enriched, and tasty.

FA R M to

F O R K

ORIGINS

our primitive relationship with food and design

The story starts about three million years ago with Australopithecus, a ancestor that lived in the prehistoric African forest Our earliest anscector was a forager, scavenging for food to sustain his predominately herbaceous diet which consisted mostly of fruits, leaves, larva and bugs. Australopithecus weighed about 40 pounds and was under 4 feet tall. His body was well attuned to chew and digest coarse, fibrous plant material. Well adapted for his diet and climate, Australopithecus was in between 3-2.4 million years ago the climate began to cool and dry out. The forest our early ancestor inhabited was fragmented into grasslands and a collectively more open environment, which supported less fruits and vegetables for scavenging. The new environment was bountiful in animals however, and our ancestors began to scavenge the remains of carcasses left by other predators. Although not technically hunting, an important method developed in the food strategy of our ancestors, as they began to use stone tools to access calorie rich and nutritious parts of the animals that predators were not able to obtain, such as skulls and bone marrow.

Around half a million years ago our ancestors, now Homo Erectus, had evolved to be full fledged omnivores. Using primitive tools to hunt, animal sources of food began to make up approximately 65% of his diet, the opposite of Australopithecus. All animals gravitate to feeding strategies that provide the most calories for the least calories expended. Animals yielded far better returns than other food sources, and this surplus of energy allowed for more activities outside of obtaining more food, such as travel or mating. Animals were also more reliable food sources, and allowed our ancestors to migrate from Africa to places like Europe, where the environment did not support a year-round herbivorous diet. The diet shift of our ancestors was fundamental in one of the most important physiology changes in our evolution. By virtue of having a diet consisting predominantly of easily digestible and calorie dense meat, organs devoted to digestion became smaller and allowed for larger brains. The larger brains in turn allowed for the development of more efficient and intelligent hunting methods.

Cave Painting Ennedi Plateau The hunting strategies evolved alongside our ancestors, now Cro-Magnons, up until the last ice age. At this point big-game, such as mastodons and bison, were bountiful. The hunting practices for these dangerous and risky food sources had become a central part to the life of Cro-Magnons, around which other aspects of their daily routine revolved around, as evidenced in cave paintings.

Although we adapted to this change, equipping ourselves with new technology, such as the bow and arrow. Hunting became more time consuming and yielded less success. Due to this, humans had to resort to more gathering of herbaceous material. Obtaining food was very time consuming and many miles of terrain needed to be covered to sustain us.

11,000 years ago however the climate grew warmer and as the glaciers receded northward, away from human settlements, along with the arctic megafauna they supported. New game appeared in the wake of the old, but the faster, smaller, and more agile creatures that populated the landscape, such as gazelle, required radically different hunting practices and techniques.

A paradigm shift of the food strategies that defined the lifestyle and culture of early humans was about to take place. A reactive food strategy, relying on whatever the land provided, was unreliable and becoming less fruitful. A new level of our relationship with food would have to developed in order to prosper, as we would have to begin to shift from extracting food from the landscape to producing it. We would become farmers.

Cave Paintings: Food in Prehistoric Art Our earliest ancestors had a close relationship with their food. Pursuit of sustenance defined their way of life. Food manifested itself in many different aspects of early design. Our ancestors hunted arctic megafauna, such as mastodons and bison. Following the creatures they hunted across many miles, their dwellings would be temporary. The majority of tools developed around this time were also concerned with the processing and procuring food. Each member of society was intimately involved with the food production systems of the time, and acutely aware of the importance and origins of their food due to their close proximity to it. The importance of the land and creatures that sustained them bestowed a reverence for nature, and consideration for the land. With the population being so close to food, it became a definitive cultural framework for society. The activities associated with food were a conduit social interactions and bonding too. Food permeated the spiritual and artistic atmosphere, being represented in cave paintings and with hunting food being an avenue for a rite of passage.

The earliest cave paintings are the first artistic expressions of humanity. They show the strength of our ancestors relationship with food. Whereas most art involving food shows a processed or finalized product, ready for consumption, such as a feast, the paintings depict the source of their food, the procurement, the hunt. The emphasis placed on the beasts that sustained our early ancestors conveys a reverence, a close spiritual connection, to these creatures. For many people today their is no connection to the farm animals that sustain them, much the opposite. Cultural trends today tries to hide the source of our food, depriving us of the opportunity to relate to food beyond as a commodity for consumption. By capturing the romance and beauty of obtaining food, they derived not only sustenance from food but purpose, giving social and spiritual texture to their lives.

AGRICULTURE

a revolution of food production and design

The agricultural revolution was supported by the increasing presence of edible plants and grasses. An important part of the shift to agricultural strategies was that it required organization and social co-operation previously unseen in our ancestors society. By 5000 BC agriculture had spread across the world, and not only plants were cultivated but animals as well.

society grew more complex as the entire population no longer needed to be devoted to food production. Having specialized trades galvanized the rate of civilizationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s development. The rise of larger societies , and the cultural and urban framework that came with them, was the genesis of new design such as the restaurant, which first appeared in ancient Rome as the thermopolium.

The nature of food strategies shaped society and the landscape, as the nomadic lifestyle of our predecessors was abandoned for the communities given rise to by a static food source. Tribes became villages, then cities, and the concentrated population was a catalyst for technological innovations that drove the progression of society.

However a new set of problems appeared with the new way of life. Original plows were only able to utilized a thin layer of topsoil, with itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s nutrients being quickly used up. The range of agricultural activities that supported cities needed to expand creating continually growing supply networks that demanded more resources to maintain and defend them. The outlines of the Roman Empire were aligned with wheat regions across Europe, Central Asia, and North Africa. By 100 BC a third of Romeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s wheat was being produced a thousand miles away in Egypt. This was just the fledgling stages of a global food economy.

Surplus of food was a new concept to humans, but by 3500 BC what farmers in Egypt were producing more than was being consumed, providing food security as well as goods to bater and trade, making commerce an integral part of our society. The roles of

Thermopolium Pompeii, Ancient Rome

As shown in the designs and works of art at the time, such as with those of Italian painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo, people felt a close relationship between themselves and nature. In Vertumnus (1591) Acimboldo shows food as being a conduit for closeness with nature, depicting the roman god of change, growth, and seasons, as a portrait composed of produce. Works such as Vertumnus show an astute awareness of food and it’s origins in the collective consciousness of society at the time, and a reverence for the earth that provides them with sustenance. Innovations in regards to food production were steadily increasing, such as seed selection, new equipment, crop rotations. Production was increased not only by more efficient practices but commerce. The quantity and type of food being produced was no longer determined by individual needs but the market. Food was becoming a commodity for commercial means as opposed to a source of sustenance. Before farmers production practices were tied to nature and its cycles, but now they were also becoming more influenced by economic cycles as well. As food production started to become a commercial and economic practice, even more effort went into greater output. Between 1300 and 1600 grain yields nearly doubled. As population is linked closely to food the amount of surplus calories produced between 1500 to 1750 caused to global population to grow from five hundred million to eight hundred million while the number of farmed acres barely increased. The population soon put a strain on the food system however, especially when European societies began incorporate more and more meat into their diet (which takes far more energy to produce than grain)

Periods of famine and hunger were ravaging societies across the world. in 1798 Thomas Malthus, and economist, published “An Essay on the Principle of Population”. In the essay he reasoned that the more hunger was present the more effort was invested into more productive food systems. Hunger would never be addressed though, because any increase in food would lead to a greater population, once again putting strain on the system. Malthus also postulated that the cycle of feast and famine was not indefinite and this is why: Food production was only increasing linearly (by the same small amount each year) but populations were increasing geometrically (doubling every several hundred years). We would soon reach a point Malthus reasoned, where population would exceed food production so much that balance could only be restored by a massive, worldwide, famine. “The power of population” Malthus wrote “is so superior to the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race” Malthus’ prediction had a tremendous impact on policy in the following century. Exporting of grain was banned, farmland was expanded, and more productive crops were being produced. Despite these efforts the extra calories being produced only allowed those who would have died to continue to live, albeit in a malnourished state that left them hardly fit to work, and put a further strain on the system. By the late 1800’s Malthus’ predictions were looking to become reality, but the rise of a global food system was able to alleviate these problems.

{pictured opposite} Vertumnus, a portrait of today Giuseppe Arcimboldo

AGRIBUSINESS

the emergence of food on a global market

The United States was particularly abundant and was able to support food demand in Europe. In 1900, 50% of Britan’s caloric consumption was imported. Advances in shipping and preservation technologies allowed for global food commerce to flourish. Farmers in the United States furthered their role in the international food market by increasing productivity further. in 1837 farmers needed 148 hours of labor to produce an acre of wheat, but in 1890 37 hours of labor was able to accomplish the same. Even with these advances in technology, the surpluses being shipped around the world were not created by more efficient or productive farming practices but simply more farming. In the late 1800’s yields slowed down causing panic the US. This spurred the creation of the Department of Agriculture. Following this great amounts of infrastructure were built to expand farmland to arid regions. Crop breeding also became more advanced. Hybrid strains of corn were developed that were bigger and grew closer together. The amont of corn an acre of land was able to produce doubled from 1930 to 1940. One of the biggest advancements was fertilizer. Traditionally if land was farmed to much soil would lose both it’s physical and nutrient qualities. The development of a way to pull nitrogen out of the atmosphere and let farmers use as much as they needed, without having to plant cover crops to replenish the

nutrients, revolutionized agriculture. Nearly half of the extra food produced since 1950 (and more than two thirds of the extra people) has been due to fertilizer Plants were now being selected for uniformity as well, to make processing easier. Heirloom vegetables disappeared, replaced by the singular varieties presented to us today. The diversity of food being produced on a single farm was vanishing as well. Farmers were encouraged to embrace mono-culture practices, to make their production practices more efficient. This type of farming was also not responsible for it’s own outputs, as there were specialized centers for processing. This new, modern, farm was very dependent on input and output connections, instead of being a holistic , and independent process. In 1957 the term ‘agribusiness’ was officially introduced, and defined the approach of industrial farming practices that we still see today. With the new processes that required less labor, less people were involved with farming. At least half of the global population participated in some capacity in farming in 1885. By 1985 that percentage had fallen to 3%. Another problem with the modern system was that animals were no longer required to forage, and instead put into cages and pens. Livestock productivity became viewed as pounds per square foot.

Greenhouses Almira Peninsula, Spain The close quarters of farm animals led to an plethora of disease outbreaks. To address this problem farmers began to feed antibiotics to the farm animals, which was shown to also improve growth dramatically as the animals were able to devote more time to growing instead of fighting diseases. As production became easier the price of meat fell. 50% of the American household budget was spent of food, and by 1980 that amount fell to 15%. Food became less prominent in consumers budget and lives, with less consideration for food in lieu of the luxury items that could now be afforded. By thinking about it less, consumers awareness of their food and origins were reduced. The falling price also had a negative impact on farmers. Usually if price falls the producer will produce less and as supply falls the price will once again rise. Farmers however have land as their most expensive input, which is difficult to scale back. So instead, farmers

invest more money to try to obtain more bushels per acre, which saturates the market and pushes prices down further. As this cycle of needing to produce more and more for a farm to survive continued, small, non-industrial farms that lacked the capital to invest in new technologies began to fade out, as the price they received per bushel fell but the bushels they were able to produce couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t rise. The industrial farms were overtaking small operations by efficiency and size, By 1990 two thirds of the United States agricultural output was coming from less than a third of the farms. The reverberations of lowering food prices were felt along the entire food chain. All roles in the food production industry have been consolidated into a few, massive, companies. The system is designed for efficency and economic response, embracing unsustainable practices in pursuit of profits.

FOOD for the

FUTURE

Agrarian and urban landscapes have commonly been viewed as opposing entities. The duality of these two concepts has been reinforced throughout the centuries, across many disciplines. Traditional views hold a romantic notion of food being produced in a pastoral, rural, setting. We have been conditioned to a lifestyle where consumers are as far removed from their food sources as they have ever been in history. The cultural conscious does not think of food being produced in the cities where it is consumed. Modern day industrial food systems invest a great deal of resources into moving food around. The emergence of a global food network has brought considerable befits, such as the ability to enjoy off-season produce, but it also has created a massive dependence on cheap fuel sources for transport. The invisibility of modern agriculture system to the public, has made it hard to perceive it’s flaws, and the dangers that using such as systems the foundation of our society presents. “If sustainability is the measure of a system’s inputs and outputs, the current food system that expends eighty-seven calories of fuel to transport one calorie of food coast to coast is wildly unsustainable.”

There are a number of challenges however with creating farming opportunities in cities. The cost of land in metropolitan areas is high, making it difficult to acquire land to such ends. Policy and zoning is also not aligned to contemporary trends, and still does no permit agrarian practices in urban areas. Recently in Guelph a landmark battle earned city-dwellers the right to own chickens in their back yard. The public perception of conventional farms will also create neighborhood resistance to such an idea. Design will have to re-imagine the farm, making it able to overcome theses obstacles, and present it in ways which capture the interest and delight of the public, sparking a desire in society to get closer to our agrarian roots. Even while we may not be able to wholly sustain ourselves through what could be grown in our backyard, urban agriculture will be important to bring consumers closer to their food and into it’s origins into their consciousness. What I will examine here will be ways in which design, from architecture to art, is bringing the urban and agrarian cultures to an intersection.

NEW URBANISM the evolution of urban design and agriculture

As the metropolis and rural landscapes grew increasingly separate in the 20th century, efforts in urban planning were made to reconcile the two. In the Depression, a number of urban planners at the time responded by conceiving a unification of the industry working population, who were very separated from their food, with the agrarian ones. Devising systems where they rotated between working in factories and farms. Looking back at a number of projects, although not built, reveals the motion of urban design towards a unification of agrarian and metropolitan landscapes. Although these projects span a larger time frame throughout the mid twentieth century, they imply strategies that infuse productive attributes into suburban contexts, and break down rigid regionalism practices that narrowly prescribes only certain functions to spaces.

Frank Lloyd Wright “Broadacre City” Ludwig Hilberseimer “Regional Pattern” Andrea Branzi “Agronica” Havana, Cuba Urban Agriculture

Broadacre City Frank Lloyd Wright Frank Lloyd Wright “Broadacre City”

Ludwig Hilberseimer “Regional Pattern”

First published by Frank Lloyd Wright in The Disappearing City in 1932, “Broadacre City” was an development concept which Wright would then continue to refine throughout his career. In his concept, Wright proposed that each citizen would be allocated one acre of land, which they would be able to sustain themselves with. While it did have similarities to suburban developments of the time, such as the need for automobile transport to get to places, “Broadacre City” revolutionized the framework of suburbs by eliminating the need to drive to obtain sustenance, as it was all made locally on the individual lots. Although evocative of a utopia, the garden city that Wright designed was never realized in built form. Nevertheless, it shows an increasing concern in design circles at the time to alleviate the worsening trends of urban design and agricultural practices in North America.

Similar to Wright’s “Broadacre City”, Hilberseimer’s “New Regional Pattern” , published in 1945 broke down the barriers of the urban rural divide, by re-imagining a settlement pattern that would decentralize distribution and food production. The form of the various buildings and land use was not imposed upon, but informed by, the landscape and potential agricultural practices. It also located areas where food production and processing took place next to areas where if was given to consumers, bringing them closer to the origins of their food.

Andrea Branzi “Agronica” Andrea Branzi’s work supports architecture and urban design that integrates with agriculture, and like agrarian models, can adapt quickly to changing seasons and needs. “Agronica” was a strategy of integrating agrarian practices into metropolitan contexts through parks. Parks and brownfield sites would be infused with agricultural uses, and populated by a modular series of structures that could change both the social and productive aspects of the park to meet the changing needs of the public and farm. “a sort of great patchwork quilt of weak and crossed penetrations, laid out in the open space of the park” The phasing plan also purported the idea that unused or brownfield spaces be used for agrarian purposes even if only for an interim. Using agriculture to beautify typically aesthetically displeasing sites brings the public closer to agriculture and highlights the importance of food to our culture and cities. Andrea Branzi also defined the potential of designing around an agricultural framework. Using the nature of food production infrastructure itself and how it relates to our earth, ever-changing and transmutable, to inform architecture and design.

“The industrial agricultural civilization makes a horizontal landscape, without cathedrals, crossable and reversible: the turn-over of crops manages the agricultural landscape according to a temporary logic, fitting to the production balance of the earth, to the flow of seasons and of the market. For all these reasons, contemporary architecture should start to look at modern agriculture as a reality in which to set new strategic relations. An architecture that renovates completely it’s reference patterns, facing the challenge of a weak and diffused modernity. Setting new relations with a culture that is not constructive in traditional terms, but productive in terms of territorial systems , following bio-compatible logics and using very advanced support technology.” -Andrea Branzi

â&#x20AC;&#x153;We are not envisaging a hypothetical, definitive state but a succession of states that correspond to the different stages of metamorphosis. Exterior areas will be born, disappear, shift, according to the evolution of the building and the rhythm of the liberation of the land, to make up a sort of moving map, like that of a crop rotation. These pieces succeed and displace one another, disappear, compose themselves into a fabric of singular and organic forms, as if this landscape was finding itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s authenticity and legibility of these construction processes, in the image of and agricultural landscape.â&#x20AC;? a n d r e a b r a n z i

Cuba 1990: Policy & Urban Agriculture The rise of the global foot network created a dangerous reliance within countries on food traveling across the world to sustain their populations. Cuba is one example of a country that became dependent of a global food market, but unlike many of the countries that share a similar reliance today, was forced to rapidly localize it’s food production, a sudden demand that quickly catalyzed innovative design and policies that brought agriculture back into cities. In 1989, 57% of Cuba’s food consumption was obtained from Soviet Union imports. The sudden dissolution of the Soviet Union made Cuba responsible for feeding it’s entire population. The citizens of Cuban cities, such as Havana and it’s 2.2 million people, had become distanced from their food sources, but quickly began to reap the benefits of their reconciliation with agriculture.

Policy formed the framework for which the people could empower themselves by taking food production into their own hands. In 1994, the Cuban government formed an Urban Agriculture department enacted measures which made the reclamation of unused public land for agriculture not only legal, but free. Support for urban agriculture also manifested itself in “Seed Houses” where resources, such as agricultural supplies and education were provided to the public. Apart from community hubs to engage and encourage the city dwellers turned farmer, infrastructure was also created to make small scale agriculture economically viable, in the form of farmers markets. By 1998 the city of Havana was producing a remarkable 50% of the countries vegetables by a network of urban gardens, with lots as small as a balcony or terrace, to urban farms that occupied what were once brownfield lots, nestled between buildings that populated the bustling metropolis. Showing how policy is an important foundation for sustainable urban agriculture practices.

Urban Agriculture Havana, Cuba

MODERN FARM redefining agriculture and our landscapes

The traditional agricultural framework has been replaced by an industrial system, that has separated consumers from their food. In order to alleviate the current problems that have arisen from our current production system we need to re-imagine the farm. The role of a farm will need to be interpreted in new ways, as not only that of a food producing landscape, but as parks, art galleries and studios even. Intertwining farms with other functions that are needed in the our current urban context, we can integrate agrarian practices in the sprawling metropolis, and in their citizens creating a conscious consideration of where their food comes from. Some of the following projects donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t bring farms into the city, but break down the urban-rural divide by making farms a destination, a place of delight and discovery, that rekindles our relationship with food.

MORIA WILSON Aquaculture Seascape Park NICK GLASE Seasoned Pasture LATERAL OFFICE Arctic Food Network KONO DESIGNS Pasona, Tokyo

Aquaculture Seascape Park MORIA WILSON Aquaculture Seascape Park Located along the coastline of Vancouver Island, the design for Aquaculture Seascape Park is a crossroads of production and playful. The gardens that populate the park are thriving with aquatic ecosystems. The park is designed with three levels that flood in response to the tide, blurring the boundaries in between land and sea, making the experience unique and ever changing for the visitor, who is exposed to a variety of ecological gradients at each of the tides.

The park is comprised of modular units that make it mobile. This lets the park attach itself to land based parks, and become an extension of the space. By operating simultaneously as a farm, park, and research facility, Aquaculture Seascape Park becomes a platform for which collaborative opportunities can occur between disciplines. Using delightful interactions with visitors, Aquaculture Seascape Park brings sustainable aquaculture practices into the spotlight. The park design also shows how productive landscapes can be designed to meet other needs of a city, in this case a park, which suggests possible strategies for incorporating agrarian uses into the urban framework in the future.

Moria Wilson

Demonstration Range & Public Park Nick Glase NICK GLASE Seasoned Pasture Agrarian practices today delineate the landscape into a series of small fence-defined grids, with which animals are grazed, with little freedom to roam the confines of conventional pastures. Many animals were herded across expansive landscapes(and in some parts of the world still are). This practice had minimal impact on the landscape, and has celebrated the beauty of the landscape that the herders transverse following their animals, romanticized in popular culture. The land experiences ecologically conscious stewardship practices, as i.’s productive state is also it’s natural one, and it’s maintenance is simply it’s protection and preservation. In the grassland hills of San Fransisco’s East Bay, Seasoned Pasture is a park concept that proposes a site that can educate ranchers

on sustainable practices, while providing visitors an opportunity to see the beauty of animal herds traversing a natural landscape, and become closer to the source of their food production. The built form that is influenced by applying this traditional agrarian practice to the landscape it defined by it’s lack of definition, the minimal infringement of anthropological architecture that Seasoned Pasture visits on the environment. Instead of fences, the land is punctuated by a series of transformable poles that communicate with GPS shock collars. The poles transform to alert and guide the cattle, in a highly versatile and responsive manner,

allowing cattle to be guided from space to space with a highly tuned sensitivity for ecological health of the grasslands. The poles also communicate with visitors, allowing nuanced and elusive landscape features to be highlighted and brought to attention. By redefining a static trail system with that of a continually evolving choreography of visitors and wildlife a sense of freedom saturates the public space, the lack of borders creating a vista that evokes the nomadic roots of food production, making consumers conscious of how important a role the environment and landscape plays into our sustenance. The welfare of the animals is also enhanced by utilizing modern technologies to return to old agrarian traditions in a contemporary vision of the nomadic landscape.

Hunting of Yesteryears, 1965

Joe Talirunill

LATERAL OFFICE Arctic Food Network Food is the framework for the culture and tradition of the Inuit. Their art, much like the artistic expressions of early humans, focuses on their food. The dynamic between the Inuit people and the environment they inhabit is forged by the prominence that food plays in their culture.

For them the animals that are the source of their food are also a medium for artistic endeavors, such as with walrus and narwhal ivory. a reminder that no part of the animal is wasted. The process that their food takes is cyclical. The animal is hunted, consumed, and then itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sacrifice is honored and celebrated as certain components are sculpted into a facsimile of the creature they once composed. By returning the elements that sustain them to their origins, a narrative of interdependence with the land is reinforced throughout their culture. The cultural framework created by the Inuitâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s relationship to food is threatened however., and Lateral Office aims to save it through their Arctic Food Network design.

Inuit Hunters Among Ice Floes

Nunavut, Canada

“We are an adaptable people. There is no doubt about that. We’ve had to be. That’s how we have always traveled season to season looking in pursuit of animals. We’ve weathered this storm of modernization fairly well - going from dog teams to snowmobiles, and flying jumbo jets and going from igloo huts to permanent homes, and of course, going from our environment - which is our supermarket - to now having supermarket-like stores in communities - all within a few decades. This has not been without consequences. But through it all, we have always had our land.

Our very predictable environment and climate and the wisdom of our hunters and our elders that they have gained through the millennia - and that always helped us to adapt to the situation. Because the hunting culture is not well understood - it is not only about the killing of animals, or the pursuit of animals. In fact, the real process of the hunt is extremely powerful. Eating and hunting personifies what it means for us to be Inuit. These skills and traditions are passed down generation to generation.”

Sheila Watt-Cloutier Chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference

Regional Food Gathering Cabins

Baffin Island, Nunavut

As more of the population is getting their food from non-traditional diets, the nutrition of the Inuit society has worsened significantly. Fresh, perishable, good and produce is very difficult to ship, so the majority of imported food is highly processed products. In Nunavut, a food basket costs twice of what it would for those in southern Canada, and to compound the high cost of obtaining food the average salaries and standards of living of those in Nunavut are worse. The average age of Inuit people is 25, with a third of the population under 15. The prevalence of youth in the Inuit, means much of the society is caught between traditional cultural values, and the influx of contemporary cultural models from the south. As the influence of traditional values wanes and the southern influences waxes, the way of life for this rich cultural repository in the North is threatened.

Using a very context sensitive design approach, Lateral Office has devised a strategy to address this issue. Support for sustaining the unconventional agriculture and sustenance methods of the Inuit are realized through â&#x20AC;&#x153;Arctic Food Networkâ&#x20AC;?. Using the trail system that defines the north, connections are strengthened through a series of hubs optimized to support the traditional food gathering strategies of the Inuit. The activities supported by this network of hunting lodges, arctic farms, and camps, will create local economies and use food and design as a means to recapture tradition and deliver it to the Inuit society.

KONO DESIGNS Pasona Tokyo The rise of the global foot network created a dangerous reliance within countries on food traveling across the world to sustain their populations. Cuba is one example of a country that became dependent of a global food market, but unlike many of the countries that share a similar reliance today, was forced to rapidly localize it’s food production, a sudden demand that quickly catalyzed innovative design and policies that brought agriculture back into cities. In 1989, 57% of Cuba’s food consumption was obtained from Soviet Union imports. The sudden dissolution of the Soviet Union made Cuba responsible for feeding it’s entire population. The citizens of Cuban cities, such as Havana and it’s 2.2 million people, had become distanced from their food sources, but quickly began to reap the benefits of their reconciliation with agriculture.

Pasona, Tokyo Kono Designs

FOOD AND ART

agriculture and artistic expressions

Food has had a long standing relationship with art. Food, its prodution, processing, and consumption emody the cultural landscape of a time, beacause of theis artistic expressions of this cultue use food as a consuit for meaning and commentary of society. Food has manifested itself in art as both subjet and medium. In “Landgrab City” food is the medium and the message, with small plots of land composed in an arrangment emblimatic of a very large and current issue. In “Lost in My Life” (Fruit Stickers) by Rachel Perry Welty the packaging of the food becomes the medium, using the colorful combination of myriad stickers to playfully represent the massive scale, yet intricate nature, of the global food market. What follows examines a collection of artistic works that signifiy the relationship between our food and form.

Landgrab City Art Farm Lost in My Life

Landgrab City

Shenzen, China Landgrab City In the bustling commercial district of Shenzhen, China, “Landgrab City” is an artistic expression of the intersection of agrarian and urban cultures, where it uses the medium of installation to expose citizens of metropolis environments to their food and bring them closer to it’s origins. “Landgrab City” is composed of two parts, a map of part of the city, home to approximately 4.5 million people, and a plot of cultivated land segmented into small pieces.The metropolis map and the agrarian spaces are scaled representations of the agricultural space needed to support the citizens of the sampled part of the city.

The various lots represent the spatial footprint of each of the foodgroups. The agricultural spaces also represent the global nature of our food network, showing the far-flung reaches of the world that food is produced and delivered to this one city. The global nature of the food network is also commented on in reflections of how undeveloped land in foreign countries is being acquired to attain food security in a uncertain future of food production, as the tendrils of urbanized developed regions spread across the world. Bringing consumers awareness of the amount of land needed to sustain them, and the story of food that travels the globe to reach their plate.

Sculpture Garden

Art Farm, Nebraska Art Farm â&#x20AC;&#x153;Art farm re-orients the artistic enterprise from a preoccupation with the landscape to focus on the social, cultural, and historical underpinnings of the contemporary rural environment.â&#x20AC;?

Ed Dadley Art Farm Director

Art farm is an art residency program located at a 40 acre farm in Marquette, Nebraska. Modern farms are the epitome about function over form, with economic goals and industrial process. Art farm brings creative gestures to the rural landscape, engaging lost narratives and traditions are bringing them into light with contemporary design.

At Art Farm the installations are experienced in the environment from which their inspiration was derived and where they were conceived, instead of viewed out of context in a gallery. The unique presentation of the pieces lends recognition to the importance of the land, which is then imparted to the observer.

Although Art Farm produces agricultural goods, the main product being cultivated is installations. Although similar in land art, in that they are both a departure from the conventional gallery, Art Farm focuses on the culture, history, and tradition of agrarian practices, as opposed to the physical qualities of the land.

The installations harvested from Art Farm bring a societal awareness of the importance of the land in producing food, while also engaging the public through vivid displays of the imagination and beauty that can be stem from visiting creativity on the typically mundane farm.

“Art Farm’s physical presence is in its buildings and land. More elusive to describe is the ambiance-and the subtle influence of the environment’s impact on time and space. The sun and stars measure your time, not the clock and calendar. Space is shaped by the proximity to sound and silence. The sky, your eyes, your ears will fill with the sound and shapes of an incredible number of birds and bugs. And, like it or not, the weather will be your collaborator in all your undertakings” -Ed Dadley

Lost in My Life The supermarket is a uniting consumer culture experience. Whereas with other consumer goods, such as clothes, where there are myriad options to chose from, there are only a handful of supermarkets to chose from, and even fewer corporations that rule them. This gravitation of all social castes to the same supermarket makes it a cultural mecca, where the influences of consumerism, trends of marketing, and streamlined industrial process that efficiently moves product from producer to user, are all exposed to society. Rachel Perry Welty is an artist who has used the presentation of food in a supermarket as an avenue of artistic expression, by making the stickers that come on produce her medium. The artist is just visible in the composition, barely visible, giving shape to the title Lost in My Life, as a consumer submerged in commercialization that has extended to even food. The food stickers used in Rachelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work are from all over the world. Although the produce they adorned has been consumed, the stickers remain as vestiges of mass produced food, hinting at a massive food network and a industrial system of production and consumption. Where once these stickers were used to categorize food, turning it into a commodity that would fit into a logical and ordered system, they have been reborn in a chaotic composition, a desire of the consumer to regain control from a mechanical perversion of our relationship with food.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;We cannot see the cornfield in the cereal aisle or the vegetable rows in the produce aisle, nor can we see the means by which the raw materials are processed, milled, roasted, cleaned, packaged and transported. So we may wonder, staring down the aisles of a supermarket, where it all comes from and how it all gets hereâ&#x20AC;?

Ellen Burke

Lost in My Life (fruit stickers)

Rachel Perry Welty

“Apples and lemons tumbled in twos and threes to the floor when someone took a fruit from certain places in the stacked array. There were six kinds of apples, there were exotic melons in several pastels. Everything seemed to be in season, sprayed, burnished, bright. People tore filmy bags off racks and tried to figure out which end opened. I realized the place was awash in noise. The toneless systems, the jangle and skid of carts, the loudspeaker and coffee-making machine, the cries of children. And over it all, or under it all, a dull and unlocatable roar, as if some form of swarming life outside of human apprehension... This place recharges us spiritually, it prepares us, it’s a gateway or pathway. Look how bright. It’s full of psychic data....All the letters and numbers are here, all the colors of the spectrum, all the voices and sounds, all the codewords and ceremonial phrases.” -Don DeLillo, White Noise

DESIGN that

FARMS

IS AWARE It is sensitive to the unique conditions that compose itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s climate. Designers ask themselves what they need, but an agrarian perspective encourages a closer investigation of what may already be present. This investigation uncovers what may be obscured, hiding in unconventional sources, or perhaps revealing itself only through practices that have only existed in our imaginations, waiting to be conceived through inspiration and motivation to create holistic and sustainable environments. The holistic system recognizes the potential of each element in a given context to contribute to a symbiotic environment. The system becomes localized, and both designer and user carry a heightened awareness of potential that resides in everything, from algae to compost, and allow us to experience the beauty of spaces that comes from the intricacy of interdependence. When consumers are close to, and aware of, agriculture, response to rain will no longer be negative. We canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t go outside, we need umbrellas, its cold and wet. Response will be positive. Delight, joy even. Rain is growth, it is the rain barrels filling up. Decay is not death persay, but the start of new life. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the creation of compost that will nurture new growth. A awareness that brings the beauty of regeneration and cycles into our perspective.

IS SEXY Designing a building, a landscape, with the main goal to have beautiful form can be a futile and difficult exercise. Designing to engage the structures, principles, and systems that reside in the localized natural environment can create beauty and charm in unanticipated ways. Design for the function of farming, a responsive practice that grants purpose and meaning, with the modus operandi of creation that nurtures the source and destination of itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s product, can lend form that is exciting and invigorating. Design for form carefully predicts and maintains a vision, trying to isolate the built form from the elements that might change it. Design for agrarian function however is meant to embrace the local environment in a way that respects itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s inputs and sculpts useful products from it. It is messy and rough, evoking a rustic charm.

IS ALIVE If design for a specific and static form could be compared to interacting with a model, where interaction is only experienced on a visual level, design for function such as farming could be considered to relate to us in the manner of a lover. It is interactive. Working the earth, digging our hands into the earth to retrieve a carrot that was planted by those same hands a season earlier brings is an intimate experience with the earth. It is tactile. Sensual. It is unpredictable, the changing of seasons and cycles breathing life into a design that transforms with these natural currents. The design makes us aware, responsive. Plants surge out of the earth, are they ready to harvest? Leaves decay, do we need to apply the compost to nurture new growth? Rain barrels fill, when do we water the tomatoes? Weed the weeds? Sow the seeds? Design that supports constant interaction and dialog such as this welcomes us to be active participants in our environment, and our environment an active participant in our lives. There is no role for a passive consumer in this relationship, where the only interaction is consumption of commercial goods found in a superficial supermarket environment, with no awareness that the processed and refined products presented to them were once alive.

REFERENCES

Toussaint-Samat, Maguelonne. A History of Food. Chichester, West Sussex, U.K.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. Print. Fernández-Armesto, Felipe. Near a Thousand Tables: A History of Food. New York: Free, 2002. Print. Bahn, Paul G. The Cambridge Illustrated History of Prehistoric Art. Cambridge, U.K.: New York, 1998. Print. Super, John C. “Food and History.” Journal of Social History 36.1 (2002): 165-78. Print. Viljoen, André, Katrin Bohn, and J. Howe. Continuous Productive Urban Landscapes: Designing Urban Agriculture for Sustainable Cities. Oxford: Architectural, 2005. Print. Waldheim, Charles. The Landscape Urbanism Reader. New York: Princeton Architectural, 2006. Print. Salsini, Paul. Frank Llyod Wright: The Architectural Genius of the Twentieth Century. Charlotteville - N.Y: SamHar, 1971. Print. Warwick, Hugh. “Cuba’s Organic Revolution.” <http://forum.ra.utk.edu/Archives/Summer2001/ cuba.pdf> Murphy, Catherine. “Urban Gardens Increase Food Security In Times of Crisis: Habana, Cuba.” <http://www.flacso.uh.cu/sitio_revista/num3/articulos/art_CMurphy13.pdf>. Pinderhughes, Raquel, Catherine Murphy, and Mario Gonzalez. “Urban Agriculture in Havana, Cuba.” August 2000. <http://online.sfsu.edu/~raquelrp/pub/2000_aug_pub.html>. White, Mason, and Maya Przybylski. On Farming. Barcelona: Actar, 2010. Print. Crandall, Richard C. Inuit Art: A History. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2000. Print. “LATERAL OFFICE.” LATERAL OFFICE. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Nov. 2013. “KONO DESIGNS - Pasona-Tokyo-Headquarters.” KONO DESIGNS - Pasona-TokyoHeadquarters. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Nov. 2013. “Landgrab!” Edible Geography. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Nov. 2013. “Art Farm, Artist and Writer Residency in Rural Nebraska, Artist Residencies.” Art Farm, Artist and Writer Residency in Rural Nebraska, Artist Residencies. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Nov. 2013. “Ulrich Museum of Art - Wichita State University.” Ulrich Museum of Art - Wichita State University. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Nov. 2013

Images

Cave painting: Ennedi Plateau. Photograph. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Web. 26 Nov. 2013. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/media/113927/Prehistoric-cave-art-Ennedi-Plateau-Chad Un “thermopolium” (una specie di “tavola calda”) a Pompei. A fresco from the thermopolium of Lucius Vetutius Placidus in the city of Pompeii. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ancient_Bar,_Pompeii.jpg Vertumnus, a portrait of today: Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor painted as Vertumnus, Roman God of the seasons, c. 1590-1, by Giuseppe Arcimboldo. http://31.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m6h6zlAGna1rnseozo1_1280.jpg Greenhouses, Almira Peninsula, Spain http://burtynsky-water.com/bwwp/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/H2O_SP_GH_01_10_SRC_WEB.jpg Broadacre City http://www.mediaarchitecture.at/architekturtheorie/broadacre_city/content/frank_lloyd_wright_1958_the_living_ city_2s.jpeg Agronica http://places.designobserver.com/media/images/waldheim-agrarian-urbanism-3.jpg Urban Agriculture, Havana Cuba http://blogs.dickinson.edu/hist315-enst311-sp12/files/2012/04/cuba.jpg Aquaculture Seascape Park, Moria Wilson http://brkt.org/images/uploads/general/02A_AquacultureSeascape.jpg Seasoned Pasture, Nick Glase http://brkt.org/images/uploads/general/03D_SeasonedPasture_AXONOVERVIEW.jpg Hunting of Yesteryears, Joe Tarunhill http://www.inuit.com/sites/inuit/gallery/pictures/1335564878749.jpg Regional Food Gathering Cabins, Lateral Office http://payload66.cargocollective.com/1/7/254933/3635722/01_AFN_Render%201_1000.jpg Pasona Tokyo, Kono Designs http://konodesigns.com/portfolio/Pasona-Tokyo-Headquarters/ Landgrab City, Shenzen China http://www.ediblegeography.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Landgrab-b-460.jpg Sculpture Garden, Art Farm http://www.artfarmnebraska.org/images/JiYong11.jpg Lost in My Life (fruit stickers), Rachel Perry Welty http://static1.artsy.net/additional_images/5059f0f5c28f5a0002000b60/large.jpg

Thank you!