Core Design and Research Studio II

Abstract

THE FABRIC OF AGROECOLOGYA Vision for the Territory of ZurichThe studio aims to research and outline potentials and projects for an agroecological fabric extending across the metropolitan region of Zurich in to contribute to an urgent transdisciplinary and political debate on the transformation of landscapes of food cultivation and their relationships to cities.

Objective

WHY AGROECOLOGY? WHY NOW? We are used to viewing pastoral landscapes, forests and streams, crop fields and meadows as seemingly detached from networks of globally interlinked and expanding urban centres. Stories of urban encroachment on agricultural land still somewhat dramatically depict one way of life replacing another more serene and inert one. In the past, rural imagery was deployed both as a backward antipode to a progressive and modern urban society, and as a bucolic refuge away from machinist industrialisation, urban congestion and squalor. In Switzerland and elsewhere, the urban-rural divide has been a cardinal tool in the political project of building the nation. Switzerland recently chose to sharpen building laws in order to densify inwards and protect the landscape, thereby maintaining its multiple qualities and preserving it from further erosion. A blind spot of this reading of agricultural landscapes is their incessant and accelerating transformation, which both mirror and remain metabolically intertwined with urban growth. What we eat in a city such as Zurich reshapes landscapes of food production near and far. Over the past 150 years the expansion and intensification of industrialised agriculture has resulted in water and natural resource exhaustion, depletion of soil fertility, loss of species and biological diversity, and the locking-in to an unsustainable, globalised food system which consumes more fossil energy than it returns in calories. In just under a hundred years, over 90% of crop varieties have disappeared because they have not proven adaptive to the expanding mechanical-chemical industrial complex known as the Green Revolution—otherwise known as “conventional farming”. In Switzerland, dozens of local farm animals, fruit tree varieties, cereals, legumes and other vegetables, have become rare species because their yields are lower, or they require more care. This is a great loss for the environment they had adapted to and had contributed to maintaining. The suppression of biodiversity within agriculture has contributed to the creation of isolated “nature areas” and “reserves” reduced to interstitial spaces. Nature reparation and preservation projects have not been able to reverse the adverse effects owing to their reduced land-cover, their fragmented form in the landscape, and incompatibility with the practices of industrial agriculture. In many traditional and indigenous approaches to agriculture, crop fields and pastureland nourishing to humans, were at the same time biologically rich ecotopes. Could we today envision new, or fortify existing agricultural and landscape practices that extend and revitalise the web of life within food production? This studio proposes an approach in which agricultural territories comprise one intermeshing, living and exchanging whole. Shifting away from anthropocentric frameworks, we will consider agricultural territories as cultivated and cared-for agroecosystems in which non-humans, humans and the environment interact in multiple ways. The studio aims to research and outline potentials and projects for an agroecological fabric extending across the metropolitan region of Zurich.

Content

Agroecology extends an indispensable ecological approach to agriculture, allowing a biosystem to become legible within the fabric of the built and unbuilt environments. Economic, political and governance aspects of agriculture are also integral to agroecological thinking. Agroecology offers a holistic approach seeking to harmonise farming and other activities with natural processes. As an approach to farming, agroecology is as old as agriculture itself: many indigenous cultures such as the Maori and Nahuatl applied what we would now consider agroecological knowledge. Within science, agronomy and ecology began to merge before WWII in order to understand where best to grow food. From the 1970s onwards, farmer’s social movements fighting to achieve food sovereignty and resisting global agriculture developments associated with the Green Revolution adopted agroecology. The UN Environmental Programme and the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation support and promote agroecology as a means to achieve 12 of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals. Among them, “zero hunger” and food security will have to be tackled under unpredictable climatic conditions, extreme weather events and seasonal variations. How can design professionals assist the empowerment of farmers and agricultural communities in strengthening the web of life in landscapes of food production? How can we build resilience together in territories capable of mitigating and adapting to climate change? Studio investigations take concrete agroecological practices in the region of Zurich as the starting point, carefully selected for their pioneering approaches. They are currently operating on a small scale and in a stand-alone fashion, but they can help open up the discussion about how to advance and multiply beneficial and exemplary practices across different contexts. During the research and design process, we will also confront pivotal scientific and political debates around the need for a transformational change in the global food system. The extended metropolitan region of Zürich is an important territorial case in Switzerland. The region comprises different areas of agricultural production areas under transformation: from enclosures entangled within densely built and expanding neighbourhoods, to fragmented agricultural land in periurban valleys, to the industrialised agriculture of the Swiss plateau and the peripheralised pastoral landscapes of the Prealps. Each situation merits specific design strategies. Together, these strategies can make a valuable contribution to the public debate, planning and governance at various levels, within and beyond Switzerland. NEW ECOLOGIES New Ecologies is a studio series at the Architecture of Territory Chair dedicated to ecologising architecture. Ecological thinking foregrounds the interactions between organisms, between objects, or social-technical systems and their environments. It is applied in relation to design practice and its social and environmental effects. The MAS in Urban and Territorial Design creates a transdisciplinary environment through the interaction of Urban Theory Sessions and Interdisciplinary Courses directly linked to the Core Research and Design Studio. Citizens, experts, and fellow designers and artists will accompany us in the process.

Resources