Foodscapes

de Joerg Schroeder, Sarah Hartmann

"From the spoon to the city" has been a Leitmotiv of modernist architecture and design. Claim and extension of modern Gestaltung, as well as its hubris, related in this concept to industrial avantgarde. Food as re-discovered issue of society and economy, and as door-opener for new relations to natural and cultural resources and regionalism, in FOODSCAPES is addressed with architectural and urban design projects for the metropolitan region Hamburg. Food is at centre of spatial research on innovative--and why not monumental--architecture and its role in metropolitan space: in models of farm, market, shop, kitchen, table, etc. In an urban design perspective, places and contexts in the city and in the countryside are focussed that, starting from the food topic, can initiate and realise social and cultural integration and circular economies. Hence, they transform into urban theatres of change boosted by an active role of architecture in shaping metropolitan space: market squares, market halls, exchange nodes, fields, pastures, orchards, etc. are focussed on as spaces and infrastructures of public interest and private engagement. Drawn together with FOODSCAPES' idea of connection by water, meanings, use and spaces of water, the river Elbe and its connected channel systems in the city and in the countryside form a spatial connecting line. Places and spaces of production, refinement, transport, and marketing of food can become drivers for a re-invention of "foodchains" as part of metropolitan innovation--and as vision of a new model of city and countryside.