SwissSummerSchool 04
FEED THE CITY

CONTENT

The food sector is responsible for about 30% of all greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. The dire need to transform this sector into a sustainable food system is one of the major tasks facing our society in the fight against climate change. Any transformation will only be possible in interaction with the surrounding space. Landscapes and cityscapes will change, but also the function, type and expression of individual buildings. As a result of a changed food system, new building types will emerge, while new forms of built infrastructure will lay the foundations for this transformation (e.g.buildings for regionally oriented supply logistics). Structural change will also take place along the entire supply chain of the food sector: from production, transport and logistics, processing and consumption to disposal or recycling. Some building types increase the efficiency of the various processes, others enable a more sufficiency-oriented consumption behaviour, reducing individual travel, and still others enable what is considered waste to be used productively.

Under the title FEED THE CITY, the Institute of Architecture at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland (FHNW) adresses the question of food supply in the face of climate emergency and growing world population, and how this interacts with our buildings, cities and landscapes.

FEED THE CITY has started with an international symposium at the beginning of the autumn semester 2023 where experts have presented the current state of the debate : feedthecity.ch. The year will conclude with a Summer School in collaboration with the Ecole Polytechnique Federal Lausanne and the Bern University of Applied Sciences. The locally rooted research from the preceding semesters will form the basis for the Summer School, and will be a chance to discuss this research with students from all over Europe. A follow-up publication will discuss and illustrate the contributions of the symposium, results of the Summer School as well as findings from the theoretical seminars and design modules.

Prof. Axel Humpert / Prof. Tim Seidel, Institut Architektur FHNW