Agridemics RCA

This project has come from Feilden Fowles at the RCA's during the Futures stage on the Architecture MA. This project creates a possible future scenario within diseased estates around London. It proposes a solution to facilitate the predetermined fates of the marginalised and excluded young people generating green routes out of London and more importantly poverty. It is a closed biodynamic system capable of self-nourishment. This studio-school acts as a prototype for future Agridemies, made possible through the utilisation of failing housing, silage from Londons parks and a young labour force.

The curriculum revolves around the cycles of dairy cattle and market gardening. The symbiosis between agriculture and academia generates a unique productive and educational environment. Livestock is housed in stock-blocks and processes through the educational spaces, interconnecting animals and students. These linkages form a productive spine, whihc terminates in the market and knits the academy into the community. This in term improves the health of the area and generates new income for its schiools and its pupils. These new productive landscapes will simultaneously re-establish the lost links between production and consumtion and re-engage a generation of disenfranchised youths with the community.

This utopian project possesses many factors that ideally I'd wish to employ within my own current work, the reconnecting of these socio-economic groups with modes of production, engaging in a physical capacity, recieving the fruits of there labour in one guise or another.

http://www.feildenfowles.co.uk/

Feeding the 5,000 at Trafalgar Square

This was an event staged at Trafalgar Sq in order to help raise awareness about the phenomenal and unimaginable levels of food waste that accumulate and typically spoil, nationally and internationally. The food was distributed and delivered by FareShare, the countries largest food re-distributer of such circumstantial food to those needy socio-economic groups, and prepared by volunteers in the areas surrounding kitchens. The food was transformed into soup and various meals and offered up to a predicted 5,000 people.

FareShare collect food from supermarkets and manufacturers and re-distribute it to those in need, the event was essentially to raise widespread awareness. This wholly unjustafiable issue has plagued societies for far too long and it is about time an event such as this has been staged, hopefully it will inform the choices and prompt the general public into being vocal in the future. Sainsburys for example typically stock 5 varieties of apple, 3 of which I believe are grown out of the Uk when in fact the country has the capabilty of growing up to 2,300 different varieties as showcased in Brogdale, Kent.

http://www.feeding5k.org/event.php

http://www.fareshare.org.uk/

http://www.brogdale.org/

BBC Documentaries

Over the course of the last year there have been a plethora of tv documentaries that have sought to expose the hidden truths of the food manufacturing industry...

What's really in our food?http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00lrjk4/Whats_Really_in_Our_Food/

Jimmys food factory: Who's fooling with our food? http://http//www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00nmt73

Mud, sweat and tractors: the story of agriculture http://http//www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00k9bms/sign/Mud_Sweat_and_Tractors_The_Story_of_Agriculture_Beef/

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The story of stuff: the critique!

Let the debate begin!

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The story of stuff...

From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. This is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns, it exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It'll teach you something, it'll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever.

Lecture: Richard Sennett at the LSE

Richard Sennet: Urban age understanding cities series

Cities, design and climate change

I attended this lecture two weeks ago, it covered multiscalar ecologies of cities, their incessant demands for resources and how these factors modify and dictate a cities geography, whether through food, furniture or jewelry and the impact these systems also have on urban relations, it covered the following:

- The sociology of consumption

- Dematerialisation of consumption

- Conspicuous consumption

- Production and consumption

- Delegating back to society

- Citizens connecting with civil societies

"People have little idea of how most things are made, they are detached from material and production value alongside the many chain links that are part of the production system. Serious change needs to occur in terms of the things people within society want and how they behave. It is when consumers begin demand to know how things are made will change occur, consumers need to begin to think for themselves"

http://www.richardsennett.com/site/SENN/Templates/General.aspx?pageid=11

Material Economies

Material economies from Michael Richardson on Vimeo.

We spent last week creating short videos, visual windows into the world of our projects. Mine, stemming around the vast canyons of knowledge that are evidently absent from the minds of the consumer, concerned the provenance of consumer goods and food products. This was a small documentary/investigation into the minds of the masses, interrogating how clued up they are about what they buy, all through the medium of film.

As you can hazard to imagine, the origins, production methods, ingredients, transportation modes were all factors vacant in the minds of most with but a few boasting knowledge of various products 'organic' and 'fair trade' credentials. One of the recurrent responses though it is worth noting, is that a fair percentage of those queried within the process seemed to think that Sainsburys, or the 'brand' itself were the organisations that manufactured the items/products, Since when did Sainsbury's ever produce any of its consumables from scratch instore?

Embarrassment

I'd say safely say a large percentage of those asked throughout the process were marginally-deeply embarrassed about their lack of basic knowledge concerning the everyday items they consume, it can be construed that which forms the everyday has marginal value, food: it's ok, it's cheap enough, we can just bin it and buy more tomorrow.

One last point, food, as well as other consumables origins are rarely scrutinised, but as interest has slowly taken a hold tv has begun to shower us with a plethora of documentaries and series regarding these very issues, provenance. Regardless to say, this detachment from production and material origins within society is nothing short of amazing.

Space makers network... lets create

Following on with the theme of self-sufficiency within communities, I visited the Brixton Arcade for a nosy round the 22 individual vacant shops that are being made available for potential businesses and art projects. All units come complete with the enticing offer of 3 months free rent and the project is being organised in conjunction with local councils and the Spacemakers network. The idea is to transform the presently malnourished shopping arcade with new/innovative business/creative enterprises in an attempt to attract and re-invigorate this rather wonderful space into something Brixton can whole heartedly boast about.

I put together a proposal for a unit, comprising intentions to lure in members of the community and engage them with an array of making practices, bridging the knowledge gap between consumption and material economies- that is everything that comes before. A lecture by Richard Sennett at the LSE inspired this course of action, one of the subjects dominating his talk was the knowledge void concerning material investment and the demise of craftsmanship and the qualities within society it imparts, anyway... I proposed so I could test out a few ideas and use it as a platform for extracting valuable opinions community wide.

http://spacemakers.ning.com/

Borough Market

One of the main purposes of this visit was for me to absorb the atmosphere and try to understand how possible it would be to transfer the positive traits of this urban environment into spaces of a less desirable nature.

Just going back to Steels 'Hungry City', I found one of the points she mentions about the breakdown of youth morals interesting, especially as she relates it directly to food, the process of eating around the table in terms of it being a primer for conversation turn taking, respect, restraint and sharing.

Vulgar cesspit of excess

The subheading is rather dramtic but there is a paragraph in Carolyn Steels book after a visit she makes and for me it has struck a high note.

Hungry City

I have just ploughed through Carolyn Steels 'Hungry City' inspired from my Transition Town participance. The book, in a very tiny nutshell, explores through history until the present day the following:


- The land
- Supplying the city
- Sitopia
- Market and supermarket
- Waste
- At the table
- Kitchen

It paints a relatively dismal picture of western, but particularly UK food culture and the detrimental effects our cheap food culture has imbued within out society, issues such as food education, social/cultural decomposition, the demise of many once charming aspects of the city...

"Those who control food, control us, and when you consider that that 80 percent of the grocery trade in Britain is controlled by just four supermarkets, that gives them incredible power, not just over our wallets, but over our bodies too. The latest trend is for large supermarkets like Tesco to become urban developers, offering local councils incentives to allow them to build large chunks of city with mega-stores at their core – effectively creating captive markets for their business."

As a consequence of reading this book, I decided to jaunt off down to London's Borough Market and embrace the atmosphere that cities now seemingly bare little witness to. I intended to understand and experience first hand the types of market that would have at some point in the not too distant past imbued social integrity and identity within the people. The animated conversations, the energetic debate, the bartering, the laughter, the nagging of children, the eating, the mess, the life and the vibrancy. Carolyn highlights in her book that market places were once the social beacons of the city, going not just back to ancient Greece or Rome but to periods as recent as that of Victorian Britain.

Transition Town Brixton

I thought that this workshop held in Brixton may house the potential to assist with the development of my project since its current focus orients around de-centralising production, de-monopolising and community base manufacture.

Transition Town is a movement which provides a framework for reducing interested towns/communities carbon footprints through a series templates, it was initiated within the UK and has since been adopted globally to much critical acclaim.

This particular workshop, as the title suggests revolved broadly around issues to do with local food security, food recycling and growing initiatives. The debate took place over the course of the day and provided a rich insight into members of the community who are actively seeking alternative methods of cultivation, recycling, rainwater harvesting etc... We brainstormed, ideated and partook in a series of activities relating to the community/city and possible within future scenarios and to top it off a liberal dousing of hand-holding and meditative breathing was thrown in for good measure. I'm slightly kidding.

My own experimental cosmetics!

Neals Yard cosmetics

In the news: Kitchen cosmetics

Perforate

Here is the 'Perforate' communal pasta packaging and final product. Given the face that product uses the hands as the main instrument I opted for a hand illustrated box and instruction guide

Perforate in practice

Communal Pasta from Michael Richardson on Vimeo.

Pasta experimention