TRANSFORMING CITIES

What does food have to do with architecture, and why should it matter?

It may appear peculiar to consider that architecture should have much to do with mediating how we deal with the food system. Architecture, after all, is the domain of spatial form and tectonics — the craft of construction — while most food production happens outside the realm of the city, in the countryside — a space characterised partly by a lack of architecture.

Suppose we understand cities as physical structures that mediate the experience of our daily lives and, consequently, the resources we consume. In that case, we realise they create the framework for our norms. The dynamics of the city govern our relationship with food, our consumption patterns, the territorialisation of our landscape, and the externalisation of waste that has led arguably led us into the Anthropocene.

Food has the potential to nurture human health and culture while supporting a diverse living world. Yet current production systems are a principal cause of ill health, social inequality, and environmental damage, including climate change and biodiversity loss. If cities are responsible for the growth and development of unsustainable infrastructures, transforming the city and countryside into resilient entities requires urban surgery: design in equal parts formal, infrastructural, systematic, opportunistic, context-driven and cultural.

The question then remains whether these concerns lie within the architect’s domain. If we consider architecture to be the aesthetic and professional product of market forces, a view there is sufficient evidence for, then perhaps not. But understanding the architects’ cultural capacity and skill-set is to formulate visions, stories, blueprints and partnerships for what is possible rather than what exists; perhaps we can re-craft our role.