EDIBLE; OR, THE ARCHITECTURE OF METABOLISM

The 2022 TALLIN ARCHITECTURE BIENALLE

Projects

Research

Head Curators:

Lydia Kallipoliti & Areti Markopoulou

Local Advisor:

Ivan Sergejev

Assistant Curator:

Sonia Sobrino Ralston

Production:

Eve Arpo, Anna Lindpere, Anu Lill (Estonian Centre for Architecture)

Curatorial Exhibition Production:

Ronja Soopan

Graphic design:

Stuudio Stuudio (Mikk Heinsoo)

Exhibition design:

kse studio (Sofia Krimizi & Kyriakos Kyriakou)

Photographs:

Petros Pattakos, Tõnu Tunnel

EDIBLE aims to empower architects, planners, and environmental designers to develop a proactive stance on architecture’s expressive capacity to perform circular operations, to produce resources -generate food and energy- as well as to decompose itself and become food. In this exhibition “food” is approached both literally and metaphorically. On the one hand, EDIBLE explores architectural strategies of local production and self-sufficiency, and on the other, operations that use by-products of urban life, replacing the traditional linear systems of “make, use and dispose” with circular systems that aim to limit material and resource loss. EDIBLE reimagines planetary food systems and transfers the metabolism and experiential qualities of the natural world – like growth, decay, digestion, and nutrient release- to the domain of cities and buildings.

Today, within the context of interconnected global crises, namely the climate emergency, the public health crisis and social inequity, the idea of a world where resources are recirculated is vital for planetary habitability. The objective of the exhibition, however, is not only to display technological instrumentality, but also to reveal how architecture constructs, distributes, and leverages power via material upcycling, interspecies alliances, biopolitics and excremental processes.

The spatial and existential connections between architecture and food surface in different scales: from the gut of our bodies to the ecology of territories and the technology of building systems. With the different thematic entities of the curatorial exhibition, we address three scales: the micro-scale of materials –from brick to soil-, the macro-scale of large-scale territories – food and geopolitics- and the meso-scale of habitation -the metabolic home,- where domestic programs are designed as ecosystems in a feedback chain of resource exchanges. Finally, the Future Food Deal (in the upper floor) is an open library that exhibits cookbooks, as well as visionary drawings and manifestos, on how architecture may respond to the alienation between people and their sources of food provisions in a time of increasing urbanization.

From new breeding practices, farming food waste, to synthetic growth and degrowth, EDIBLE explores the potential of all natural and technological expressions to mitigate the contaminating and extracting nature of our desires and protocols related to the production of the built environment.

Participants

Andres Jaque [Office for Political Innovation]; Hayley Eber and Mae-Ling Lokko [The Cooper Union]; Alexandre Dubor and Aldo Sollazzo [IAAC]; Caroline O’ Donnel [CODA]; Mitchell Joachim [Terreform One]; Allison Dring [Made of Air]; Sille Pihlak & Siim Tuksam [ Part]; Lola Ben Alon & Sharon Yavo Ayalon; Iason and Evangelos Pantazis [Topotheke]; Andreas Theodoridis & Christina Ciardullo; Claudia Pasquero & Marco Poletto [Ecologic Studio] ; Annika Kaldoja & Kärt Ojavee; Siim Karro, Karl Pärtel, Erki Nagla [Myceen]; Chiara Farinea [IAAC]; Helis Heiter [Heiter X]; Sonia Ralson, Lydia Kallipoliti, Sanjana Lahiri; Robert Charles Johnson; Philip Maughan & Andrea Provenzano; Mason White & Lola Sheppard [Lateral Office]; Rania Ghosn & El Hadi Jazairy [ Design Earth]; Anastasios Telios, Despoina Zavraka, Dimitrios Chatzinikolis, Georgios Grigoriadis

Supported by

Thermory, The Ministry of Culture of Estonia, The Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Enterprise Estonia, British Council, Onassis Culture, Visit Estonia, The Estonian Association of Architects, The Estonian Museum of Architecture, Tallinn Urban Planning Department, IAAC - Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia, Friendship Products, Laufen, Ruukki, Velux, Tallink Hotels, Estonian Academy of Arts, The Office of the Embassy of Canada in Estonia, Haage Natural Mineral Water, Crafter’s, OBJKT.COM, Xenia Joost, Tallinn Music City

The FUTURE FOOD DEAL is a library of visionary drawings and manifestos, on how architecture may respond to the problem of alienation between people and their sources of food provisions.