OVERVIEW

WHAT IS COUNTERARCHITECTURE?

A superfood counterarchitecture is an intervention that addresses the lack of awareness for the detrimental effects the cultivation of superfoods have had on the environment (not limited to but including air, soil, water), as well as its impact on the culture around food.

PROJECT BRIEF

My initial recipe was tofu. Originally from the Chinese Han dynasty about 2000 years ago, Tofu is a dish made of coagulated soybeans that serves as base for many Southeastern and Eastern Asian cuisines. Recently, with an increased boom in veganism and vegetarianism in Western media, Tofu has risen in popularity as a versatile base for many recipes, often acting as alternates for dairy-based products, such as cream cheese, and meat. Soy is one of the more notorious superfoods that is directly linked to the “farms race” 1 due to its use in livestock and poultry feed. Although the cultivation of soy itself is not necessarily detrimental to the environment, the indirect consumption of soy through various meats and the amount of greenhouse gas produced as a result of livestock farming is 2. Referred to as Okara in Japanese and Biji in Korean, soy pulp is the byproduct of tofu-making, as bean pulps are strained out for a smooth, sometimes silky texture. Most pulps generated by industrial tofu-makers are sold to farms as animal feed. As a way to address waste and damage that can be caused by the use soy pulp as animal feed, I created edible candles made of soy pulp, sugar, and baking soda. This candle acts as counterarchitecture of soybeans, specifically in waste generated

by soybean products, because it acts as an intervention that reroutes the traditional path to animal feed that soy takes in industrial tofu-making. Inspired by the similarities between air pockets formed within tofu as it coagulates and air pockets formed when hot sugar interacts with baking soda, the edible candle features a bulky exterior and airy interior that melts and drips onto the final course of a meal (dessert) whilst providing ambient light.

1 Produced by Matt Hickey, By Stephen J. Dubner (2019, December 11). How the supermarket helped America win the Cold War (ep. 386). Freakonomics. Retrieved November 28, 2021, from https:// freakonomics.com/ podcast/farms-race/.

2 Soy. World Wide Fund for Nature. (n.d.). Retrieved November 28, 2021, from https://wwf.panda.org/ discover/our_focus/ food_practice/sustainable_ production/soy/.