Assignment brief: "Design a food experience unlike anything currently on the market today."
Starting with primary and secondary research, our team worked to create an interactive experience that seeks to reconnect people with where food comes from. Convivium is essentially a unique combination community garden, hydroponics farm, community gallery, hands on museum, greenhouse and tapas bar.
Certainly, these projects were "stretching" exercises. Where else are you going to be given an open ended assignment like this but graduate school? Our group focused on research showing that people are increasingly divorced from the sources of their food. So we began to discuss ways that we could bring the food experience into a sphere where food production and consumption was in the same place. This experience should be all-encompasing, entertaining and educational. Immediately avoiding the visuals of a slaughterhouse, we decided to focus on fruit, vegetables and herbs as our primary focus for growing food on site.
The idea behind our design was to engage food on several levels. First, to progress through the process of growing, harvesting, preparing and consuming food. Second, the appeal of a place that's always green for those who live in Northern climates to get away from the cold and engage in an environment that's always Summer. Third, to challenge one's assumptions about food. What makes something edible, and how can we consider more sustainable forms of food? Last of all, and perhaps least important, a place to buy fresh, locally produced food and take it home or eat it there with an elevated view to take the entire production process in context.
Trying to imagine this gathering of production and consumption as a reproducable experiment, it became obvious that seasons and weather would be important factors. In the end, Convivium ended up a mix of terrerium, hydroponic farm, public "food oriented" gallery, specialty store and resturaunt. The goal was to design as space that was as self-sustaining as possible. Waste from the resturaunt, or tapas bar would composted, and in turn, create fertile soil for the gardens. The hydroponic gardens would create the lion's share of the crops, but the opportunity to experience nature re-defined was an important part of the overall experience.
