-------------

MAtt BARBER
-------------

master of architecture

<Previous    *random*    Next>

︎ ︎ ︎

-------------

During my visit to Venice back in 2018 I discovered what a unique, surreal place it really is. It was brought to my attention the importance of food culture in this city. Delving into this deeper I began to understand their reliance on food imports with more than 95% of their produce grown away from the lagoon. This causes increase to cost of food and sacrifice of quality based on travel time from farm to fork.

This project called “Seed” aims to be a catalyst to tackle some of the self-sustaining issues around food in Venice as well as provide a showpiece on how we can use current and future technologies to produce fresh food within our cities. Seed is an agricultural research facility situated in Venice’s Arsenale, which will work as both an active farm and educational space for local Venetians and the wider public.

The cooking school, which sits within the canal aims to draw more public interaction to the site and benefit to the urban farm. The produce used within the classes is collected from the urban farm, and food waste is broken down here and returned as fertiliser to the crops creating a sustainable closed loop system.

Through the existence of this urban farm growing local produce, and the cooking school connecting the locals to this mission, a more sustainable future for Venice is possible. A future with less food imports is a future worth living.
 

︎︎︎︎︎︎