From Smartcity to the Food Parliament: an investigation into the urban consequences of food transparency

摘要

Over the centuries, there has been an undeniable symbiosis between urbanization and food production. The first part of the research, ‘Food +’ reassesses this relationship in an era of unrelenting urbanism and global food shortage, two interdependent phenomena that must reach a rapprochement to prevent an impending catastrophe that is human as much as environmental. ‘Food +’ consists of a series of investigations in which the extant cultural, legal, educational, medical, financial and employment frameworks of the city are reinterpreted through the medium of food and the spatial implications of how the city is governed. The research culminates in a speculative piece of polemic, the ‘Food Parliament’, a system of architectonic components that operate as a sustainable stratum over London. The discourse follows similar themes of sustainability and transformation of cities initiated in ‘Smartcities’, but looks at how the creation, storage and distribution of food has been and can again become a construct for the practice of everyday life. The Food Parliament, a provocation, is premised on the adoption of food as the local currency standard. Formally unorthodox, the components of the Parliament become metaphors for food immediacy, nutrition, health, job opportunities, green income sources and social cohesion, and simultaneously raise serious questions about the priorities of our governing bodies. Although the Food Parliament is a fantastical construct, the principles that underlie its premise and the justification for its existence, are both real and urgent.