Abbotsford's Starter Culture.

Group partner: Aaron Yeap

The project investigates the cultivation medium which performs fermentation, and concurrently hypothesises how architecture might Conserve, Cultivate and Convert societal nourishment, specifically, food matter and culture.

Timeline

Master year one, semester one

2020

Tutor

Sam Hunter, Danielle Peck

Issue

According to Sustainability Victoria, each year Victorian households throw away quarter million tonnes of edible food. Almost two thirds of the food Victorian households throw away could have been eaten.

Is it the fear consuming something that has expired based on its label?

Solution

Fermentation: low-tech solution to a high-tech problem. Using it as a design approach, we investigated fermentation to break down formal concepts in the context of food, society and architecture and explored how it can help us to think differently. Through our research, we have abstracted 3 pillars from fermentation to formulate our institute’s masterplan.

1. Conserve

2. Cultivate

3. Convert

Dish

The dish is a boiled dough stuffed with fermented chilli filling.

The dough casing represents a blank vessel while the fermented chili represents a cultivated medium prepared under specific conditions. By understanding the architectural qualities of our new dish, we then applied these concepts to our design proposal.

Following our main character, Brad and his progression of creative expression

Brad matures as a local artist and now has his own platform to exhibit his artworks publicly.

Brad is working on his latest artwork, and is finessing his skills with support from his peers.

Brad is a new aspiring artist who struggles to find a platform in his local community.

Convert

Conserve

Cultivate

Conclusion

To wrap it up, our project aims to build a link between fermentation and scaffolding as an architectural proposition to empower people through education on fermenting their food, community and creative expression through art and making. At the same time to build a healthy support system for the future generation of creatives and act as a model for bringing cultures and various forms of expression together.

Food is art, food is political,

and we should constantly remind ourselves about its social and cultural significance in contemporary times.