Agriculture replenishes the city

For some years now, the conflictual coexistence between the urban environment and the agrarian world seems to have returned to the centre of multiple interests. The causes are the prospect of a food crisis – albeit a distant one, at least for our European regions – and the proven loss of biodiversity. Young architects are seizing on this scientific knowledge and on the needs of public authorities to design an unprecedented encounter between the organic, the mineral and the human, and to imagine a new range of spatial qualities and sensory experiences.

Fabien KLOPFENSTEIN
Architect EPFL
Architect at BCMA SA, Eaux-Vives, GenevaA corner of Earth: Urban engineering and the agricultural soul: a meditation on a kitchen-garden promenade
Starting from a project that is at once generic in its definition and specific in its context, to reflect prospectively on the place of agriculture in the city, the influence of the city on the agricultural world, and the future of the 3 economic sectors and their distribution.

and

Emilia PHANHSY
architect DE ENSA Nancy
DSA in architecture and urban planning (in progress)
What agro-urban devices for the metropolitan fringe?
A vision of Greater Nancy through the lens of food.
In the face of alarming findings on the major impact of the food sector and the complexity of this system, this final-year project adopts a “revolution from below” to transform the system for the better.
For my final-year project, I decided to apply a method more commonly associated with landscape architects, namely shaping the project from the site (rather than from the brief, as architects do). A genuine paradigm shift that allowed me, through a historical and geographical reading of the territory,
to identify the strengths as well as the opportunities of the site. I then chose to base this project on three themes: producing, biodiversifying and learning. This thematic approach offers a symbiotic complementarity that enables a multi-scalar approach. Here the citizen is placed at the heart of the process, to activate the lever of healthy and sustainable food for all. An approach that, by 2050, propels food into the heart of the urban fabric through the organisation of a high-quality, productive and living agro-urban fringe.

Respondent:

Marc BENOIT
Agronomist
Former Research Director at INRAE
PhD in territorial agronomy
Member of the Collectif Paysages de l’Après-Pétrole

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