Anne de Zeeuw

What if? Thinking through/confronting our relation with food

What if we run out of food? Imagine our food supply chain coming to a dramatic halt. Stores remain empty, indefinitely.

We zoom into the city of Rotterdam, where one street decides to build to realise a new way of relating to food. Slowly, a small scale communal food system arises, each part assembled from the materials of what used to be apartments; used to be their homes. Upon the tram rails and existing foundations they build an open sewer for composting, followed by a corridor system for food storage. The top layer consists of open wooden constructions, the shapes and functions of which may change over time. Right now we find a woodstove, an abattoir, a dry house/meeting place, a kitchen (of course), a water tower, smoke tower, two greenhouses, and a wood workshop. Do you think this is a dystopian future?

Our present day relations with food have become distorted. Through architecture and using speculative design this project proposes an alternative, ambiguous story.

More information

• Master thesis 'What if?: Thinking through/confronting our relation with food'