Food and architecture.
When both have solved themselves, they can help cure a lot of our own current “problems”.
Agriculture and construction are merely the top layer of a much more deeper field of questions and therefore a start for a broader range of possible answers. In that context food and architecture can also be seen as a methodological system, individually or in tandem and as such, define the system.
More than the observation of the direct causes and the effects of both topics, we can engage with the possibility of a heuristic framework of decisions. I acknowledge the need for a more precise terminology in this approach, nevertheless the essential concept of these words can be used as an abstract context for opening purposes.
i.e. “food” as a social connection, moralising conscientious decisions on empathy, solidarity and generosity within economic development in the construction sector.
i.e. “architecture” as a mediator of the time wasted in the discussion of international goods provenance by the agricultural sector, implying in design decisions of offices a self sufficient naturalised area for edible plants.
This is just an example of what and how it can help us escape the current framework and who we need to engage in order to do so.
Prototyping continuously in a laboratory based environment, directly connected with several workshop based experiments, can help our perception of an exact cure. This is the possibility of prosperity within the topic of planet resources starting with our ability to accept us as simultaneously an extractive and self healing mechanism.
Permutations on food, housing, mental health, scarcity, general diversity, can propose, from the discipline of architecture, both theoretical and projectual outcomes that recognise the impact of design in the built environment.
As an idea that must be actioned by the adolescents of today, it resides within the field of academic training and consequential professional pedagogical practice. It acts as the paradigm shift we must admit by a continuous transformation and not by a replacement change.
Food and architecture can help us solve each other.
Elemental as shelter and fire in the beginning of our culture, mere humans in a planet of many.
LAP LAB
Laboratório de Arquitectura do Porto
PAL LAB
Porto Architecture Laboratory