Tag: food-production | ArchDaily

The Kitchen as a Social Space: Everyday Rituals and the Making of Place

Camilla Ghisleni — Sat, 14 Feb 2026 07:30:00 +0000

Can architecture be built from food? Between the fire that warms, the smells that spread, and the bodies that gather around the table, the apparent banality of cooking and eating reveals itself as a choreographed dance of spatial appropriation and belonging. These gestures organize routines, produce bonds, and transform the built environment into lived place. The kitchen—domestic, communal, or urban—thus ceases to be merely a functional space and affirms itself as a territory of encounter.

Can We Build with Food? Circular Experiments at the Matter Matters Lab

Eduardo Souza — Tue, 29 Jul 2025 07:30:00 +0000

What does it mean to build with care, using what others leave behind? This question shapes the work of the Matter Matters Lab, an initiative founded by architect and researcher Catherine Söderberg Esper during the isolation of the pandemic. Drawing from experiences across cultures and motivated by a personal transformation during motherhood, Catherine began to investigate everyday waste as raw material for regenerative construction systems. Her first experiment involved gluing her own cut hair using white glue, initiating a radically intimate and handmade approach. Since then, the lab has focused on transforming organic waste into low-impact architectural materials, inspired by Indigenous knowledge systems and aiming to break from extractive models in construction. Projects like the Avocado Bricks, made from discarded avocado seeds, exemplify this approach of local, circular, and rooted in the idea of reciprocity between matter, place, and care, offering a new way of building with waste.

Slow Architecture as an Ethical Practice of Design and Construction

Eduardo Souza — Tue, 15 Jul 2025 06:30:00 +0000

At the Bruder Klaus Field Chapel, designed by Peter Zumthor, the construction process involved the direct participation of residents from the small Swiss village of Mechernich. Using an internal formwork made of vertically placed wooden logs, concrete was prepared in small batches and poured manually, day after day, forming layers marked by subtle variations in the mix and application. At the end of the process, the wooden structure was reduced to ashes, leaving the chapel's interior impregnated with traces of fire and revealing a dark, tactile surface. The result was a quiet and deeply meaningful space, where collective action, time, and material transformation became part of the architecture. Centered on locally available resources and manual techniques, this construction method highlights how the choice of materials and building system can shape the experience of a space, reveal the time invested, and embed the culture of a place into the very matter of architecture. In doing so, it offers an example of how construction itself can become a regenerative act, restoring meaning, connecting communities, and honoring material cycles.

National Pavilion UAE Highlights Food Security at 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale, Led by Azza Aboualam

Nour Fakharany — Fri, 31 Jan 2025 06:30:00 +0000

The National Pavilion UAE has opened at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia with the exhibition titled Pressure Cooker. Curated by Emirati architect Azza Aboualam, assistant Professor at Zayed University and Co-founder of Holesum Studio, the exhibition explores the evolving relationship between architecture and food production in the UAE, proposing innovative solutions for sustainable and self-sufficient food systems. Positioning the built environment as a catalyst for ecological resilience, it asks: In the face of climate and resource challenges, how can design shape more secure and sustainable food systems?

An Urban Living Machine for the Common Good: Municipal Services Buildings in Hong Kong

Jonathan Yeung — Sun, 05 Jan 2025 07:30:00 +0000

In Delirious New York, Rem Koolhaas vividly discusses the Downtown Athletic Club, a striking example of how an unassuming building exterior can conceal a vibrant mix of distinct, self-contained programs. Inside the uniform facade of this skyscraper, a private athletic club hosts an eclectic range of facilities—boxing gyms next to oyster bars and interior golf ranges below swimming pools—all segregated yet highly accessible. The Downtown Athletic Club epitomized the dynamism of New York's skyscrapers at the time, showcasing the thrill of capitalism through a selective, inward-focused world of leisure and privilege for the selected. This "machine of programs" operated independently of the external city as an isolated ecosystem within its walls. Yet, one might ask: could a similar model, designed for public use, create a more inclusive, lively community and neighborhood experience? This will activate the building within, instead of only serving the selected elites, and influence and transform the urban fabric and shapes around the building. In Hong Kong, a distant parallel can be drawn with the Municipal Services Buildings (MSBs)—publicly-funded structures that serve the community by integrating diverse functions within a singular vast building mass, much like the Downtown Athletic Club.

Cultivating Spaces: Where Architecture Meets the Farm-to-Table Movement

Olivia Poston — Tue, 03 Dec 2024 05:00:00 +0000

The farm-to-table movement represents a profound shift in how food is grown, distributed, and consumed. Rooted in sustainability and the support of local economies, it prioritizes fresh, locally sourced ingredients and fosters direct relationships between producers and consumers. While the concept focuses on food, the spaces where these connections occur are equally important in shaping the experience, highlighting the critical role of architecture.

The Netherlands Pavilion Explores Collaboration and Clean Energy Systems at Expo 2025 Osaka

Nour Fakharany — Tue, 20 Aug 2024 05:30:00 +0000

The Kingdom of the Netherlands's pavilion, presented at the Expo 2025 Osaka, Kansai, Japan, features the theme, "Common Ground: Creating a New Dawn Together," emphasizing the Netherlands' dedication to fostering mutual understanding to address global challenges. Designed by RAU Architects, the pavilion's circular design features a prominent illuminated sphere at its center, symbolizing a new era of unlimited clean energy, akin to a "man-made sun" signaling a future powered by sustainable resources.

Decarbonization and Regional Solutions: The Main Architecture-Related Themes to Look Out for at COP28

Maria-Cristina Florian — Thu, 30 Nov 2023 06:30:00 +0000

On November 30, 2023, the UN COP28 climate summit begins in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates. The name stands for the Conference of the Parties under the UNFCCC, and symbolizes the annual meeting of world governments for the purpose of establishing strategies to limit the extent of climate change and its adverse effects. Last year’s summit concluded with several important measures, including the promise of a global fund aimed at providing financial aid to developing countries affected by climate disasters.

Foster + Partners Reveals Designs for Ellison Institute of Technology Campus Expansion in Oxford

Nour Fakharany — Tue, 17 Oct 2023 05:30:00 +0000

Foster + Partners has just revealed the designs for the Ellison Institute of Technology (EIT) campus in Oxford. Initially established as a research and development center, the campus is now gaining a significant expansion. The Institute’s core focus and research was around cancer, wellness, and public health at large, and it is now extending its mission to encompass new vital domains: medical science and healthcare, food security, sustainable agriculture, clean energy, climate change, and government policy economics.

Foodscapes: A Journey into the Architectures that Feed the World

ArchDaily Team — Wed, 05 Jul 2023 04:30:00 +0000

Foodscapes: Spain's Pavilion for the Venice Architecture Biennale 2023, curated by Manuel Ocaña and Eduardo Castillo-Vinuesa, explores the Spanish agro-architectural context to address global issues. It analyzes the past and present of food systems and the architectures that construct them, in order to look towards the future and question other possible models that are capable of feeding the world without devouring the planet.

The Challenge of Food Production in a Planetary City

SPIN Unit — Tue, 20 Dec 2022 02:30:00 +0000

In an age of unprecedented globalization, our food supply chains — the institutions and mechanisms involved in food production and distribution — have become longer. So much so that they are hardly perceived as chains or systems. They have been integrated into our lives, and into our cities, and transformed our relationships with food. And yet, those very long food supply chains are implicated in some of our most pressing global problems, from food security and waste to biodiversity and climate change. These food supply chains have come to their current state, their current length, over decades, or centuries perhaps, through all sorts of political, social, cultural, and economic processes, and carry with them a range of burdens: vague producer-consumer relationships, and a host of negative environmental externalities, among many others.

Tallinn Architecture Biennale Opens on September 7, Under the Theme of “The Architecture of Metabolism”

Paula Cano — Mon, 05 Sep 2022 04:30:00 +0000

Dedicated to the theme "Edible; Or, The Architecture of Metabolism," the 6th version of the Tallinn Architecture Biennale (TAB) 2022 opens on 7 September 2022, in partnership with ArchDaily and the curatorship of Lydia Kallipoliti and Areti Markopoulou, in collaboration with local advisor Ivan Sergejev. Divided into five thematic groups: Living machines, Lifecycle, Food and Geopolitics, Food Systems, and the Future Food Deal, the TAB invites audiences to reflect on food and architecture and to reimagine planetary food systems along with architecture's capacity to perform metabolic processes.

Tallinn Architecture Biennale Announces Programme and Participants for Its 6th Edition

Andreea Cutieru — Wed, 13 Apr 2022 05:30:00 +0000

Tallinn Architecture Biennale (TAB 2022) announced the programme for its 6th edition that brings forward circularity in architecture. Under the theme "Edible; Or, The Architecture of Metabolism", this year's edition explores "architectural strategies for local production and self-sufficiency" and highlights ways of reusing waste resulting from urban environments. Curated by Lydia Kallipoliti and Areti Markopoulou, in collaboration with local advisor Ivan Sergejev and assistant curator Sonia Sobrino Ralston, TAB 2022 reflects on the possibilities that natural metabolical processes can bring to cities and buildings when transferred to the domain of architecture.

What a Yeast Sachet Can Tell Us About the Cities of the Future

Nicolás Valencia — Mon, 11 May 2020 06:35:00 +0000

Stores in Santiago, Chile, ran out of yeast in mid-March, such as it happened after the beginning of the social crisis in 2019. Given that Chile has the second-highest bread consumption per capita in the world, it would seem that Chileans handle uncertainty stocking up ingredients for bread making. Everybody wants to make bread, including myself.