the reopened Arches of Nuevos Ministerios in Madrid, after its rehabilitation, were the setting chosen for the presentation yesterday of the Spanish pavilion at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, which will open on May 19 and will take place from May 20 to November 26. The curator of this edition, Lesley Lokko, has chosen as theme ‘The Laboratory Of The Future’.
The jury of the ideas competition for the Spanish pavilion chose the project as the winner ‘Foodscapes’curated by the architects Eduardo Castillo-Vinuesa and Manuel Ocaña, whose motto is ‘When eating, we digest territories’. His proposal, which addresses issues related to the way we produce, distribute and consume food, is “a journey of exploration through the architectures that feed us, from the home laboratories of our kitchens to the vast operational landscapes that nourish our cities.” Thus, this journey through this metabolic architecture covers the entire food chain: plantations, greenhouses, slaughterhouses, highways and highways, supermarkets, kitchens…
The origin of the project is the book ‘Synergetic Stew: Explorations in Dymaxion Dining’, by R. Buckminster Fuller (1982), republished on the occasion of its 125th anniversary. Also, a trip that Castillo-Vinuesa made to Peru and, specifically, to the citadel of Machu Picchu. The curator warns that “the way we produce food, distribute it and consume it mobilizes our societies, shapes our metropolises and transforms our geographies more radically than any other source of energy. ‘Foodscapes’ looks to the future to explore other possible models: ones capable of feeding the world without devouring the planet».
The architect laid out the three keys to the projectwhich, he clarified, is not about food, but about the architecture of the food system: five short films, an archive in the form of a recipe book (total recipes, they call them) and a public program of conversations, debates, events and collective research around how to redesign that system in the future to make it more sustainable.
The commissioners have invited a group of multidisciplinary artists to do their own research on this issue: waste centers, the cold chain, greenhouses in places like El Ejido (Almería), soil deterioration… The five shorts (digestion, consumption, distribution, production and base or floor) will go in the side rooms of the pavilion, while the ten total recipes will be in the central nave, like a large cabinet of curiosities. These have been carried out by a group of eclectic architects. One of them focuses on the first captive octopus farm in the Canary Islands. Another, in the protein powder that 14% of the Spanish population already consumes: 7 million drink protein shakes. A third recipe addresses the importance of forests and wood in the production of wine: “Without wood there would be no wine.” The images of the project were taken by the architecture photographer Pedro Pegenaute, who accepted the challenge of visiting (and photographing) 50 places.
The jury in charge of selecting the project for the Spanish pavilion highlighted both the originality as the depth of the exhibition’s approach: «’Foodscapes’ offers a real, smart and innovative speech that promotes research and promises a learning experience in which Spanish architecture and the national territory are the protagonists. Spain occupies a strategic position as a laboratory for a more sustainable future in terms of food systems and the architectures that build them, both because of the variety of their agri-food production and because of our country’s exposure to the climate crisis. The project reveals a practical will to create an architecture capable of changing our vision of the world”.
The Spanish Pavilion is organized by the General Directorate of Urban Agenda and Architecture of the Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda, Spanish Cultural Action (AC/E) and the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (Aecid), in collaboration with TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary and with the support of the European Climate Foundation and the Arquia Foundation.