The built environment has historically served humans as a mechanism of environmental control. Through our intellectual capacities and ability to organize, we have used buildings to actively influence and terraform the immediate context in which they are inserted, often treating geography, water, and ecosystems as resources to be extracted and managed. However, more and more, architecture is transitioning from exploiting physical and biological matter to actively collaborating with it. This shift demands that architects explore how buildings and their materials grow, transform, decay, and persist beyond human timelines. This thinking also serves as a starting point for the profession to reflect on how it influences the natural world, as well as the non-human species around it, creating networks and connections between humans, buildings, living organisms, and natural environments.

+ 5

There is a standard way of telling the history of architecture and food. It begins with the human decision to cultivate, to store, to distribute, to consume, and ends with the building that decision produced. In this version of events, food is the occasion and architecture is the response.

But what if the story runs differently? What if the tomato built Almería? What if the cod redesigned the North Atlantic? What if the soybean is, at this moment, constructing a port in Santos and demolishing a forest in the Cerrado simultaneously, and the architect has simply not been told? These are descriptions of processes already complete, or well underway, that have produced some of the most spatially consequential contemporary landscapes. Much of the built environment is shaped by the pressures, metabolisms, and territorial ambitions of what we eat. Architecture, in this, is often less a project than a consequence, and the discipline has been telling its own story from the wrong end.

+ 23

At a time of ecological collapse and rising food insecurity, architecture is increasingly called upon to engage not only with landscapes but with the systems that sustain and regenerate them. Among these systems, agriculture occupies a paradoxical role, as both a leading contributor to environmental degradation and a potential agent of ecological recovery. Industrial farming has depleted soils, fragmented habitats, and driven climate change through monocultures, fossil-fuel dependency, and territorial standardization. In response, agroecology has emerged as a counter-practice rooted in biodiversity, local knowledge, and the cyclical rhythms of nature. It reframes farming not as extraction, but as regeneration of ecosystems, communities, and the soil itself.

This reframing opens space for architecture to contribute meaningfully. To align with agroecology is not only to support food production, but to engage with the broader cultural, spatial, and ecological conditions that sustain it. It implies designing with seasonal variation, supporting shared use, and building in ways that respect both the land and those who work it. Architecture becomes more than enclosure — it becomes a mediator of cultivation, reciprocity, and coexistence.

+ 47

Crisis, crisis, crisis... and guess what? More crises. Every time we hear that word, it all feels more daunting. But here's the thing: with every challenge comes an opportunity. From the affordable housing shortage to the economic downturn and the climate emergency, there's always a new challenge, opening the door to new possibilities. But the truth is, none of these are isolated events; they're all interconnected in some way, forming different facets of the same story. Perhaps one of the least mentioned, particularly when it comes to the built environment, is the global food crisis, which is growing (almost) silently, waiting to take center stage. It poses various challenges for future food production, especially in cities.

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