Food Trucks

"The Los Angeles local is part of an ever-evolving history of mobile food vendors, which began with the ‘chuckwagon’ created in 1866 by Charles Goodnight

Goodnight’s invention was used to feed herdsmen on long cross-country cattle drives and soon was followed by night lunch wagons serving construction workers in New York in the 1890s and mobile canteens in the late 1950s. The appearance of the slang term ‘roach coach’ served to define the cheap and grubby reputation of these mobile food vendors."

"But now with more than three million food trucks and five million food carts in the US, the competition between mobile vendors serving cut-price gastronomic experiences has reached fever pitch."

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Mobile Food Market

"...mobile food market ....brings fresh produce at good prices to the people most in need. Everybody pitched in; the Toronto Transit Commission donated a wheel-trans bus designed to carry people in wheelchairs, so it is accessible to everyone."
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Floating Gardens of Bangladesh

"...three years ago, Ms. Khatun was trained by Shidhulai Swanirvar Sangstha, a Bangladeshi nonprofit organization, to tend an unusual source of food and income: a floating farm with a duck coop, fish enclosures and vegetable garden moored by rope to the riverbank."

Floating farms — and produce that can flourish in flood conditions — are a way to help Bangladeshis live with rising waters.

“There is big demand for solutions for climate change-affected areas,” said Mohammed Rezwan, the founder and executive director of Shidhulai.

With the extra income from selling eggs, fish and vegetables, Ms. Khatun started saving money in a bank for the first time, bought a bed to keep her and her family off wet ground in their dirt-floored home, and helps her husband support the family.

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Urban Bee Hives

Although the drop in mortality is a positive, as is the fact that CCD does not seem to have afflicted Australia, two-thirds of beekeepers surveyed by the USDA still see any losses greater than the 18.9 per cent level as unacceptable and non economically sustainable. 

All of these statistics highlight a threat to bee colonies which will in turn affect global food security, agriculture jobs and pollination across the green environment. These statistics have prompted architects to create sustainable structures to house bees particuarly in urban areas. 

Many of these projects are designed to replicate the “hive” environment. Norwegian design firm Snøhetta’s Vulkan Beehive is made up of two birch veneer hexagonal volumes that aim to house bees while also educating city inhabitants on the current threat of CCD. 

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Taste + Space

Lidia Klein

"Among the senses engaged in experiencing architecture, taste remains the least active. Edible architectural structures seem only to exist in fiction, in stories such as The Gingerbread House, a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm and published in 1812. The protagonists, Hansel and Gretel, are a young brother and sister cast away from home. Wandering alone through the forest, the two children discover a house made of cake and confectionery. Tempted by the luscious structure, the hungry siblings start to bite into its sugar windowpanes and gingerbread roof, not yet knowing this architectural treat is a trap set by a witch. In Grimms’ story, architecture appears as an object of immediate, bodily experience. Doors, roof, walls and other structural elements function as sources of sensual pleasure, as they are “nibbled,” “tasted,” and “enjoyed with.”1 The tale of Hansel and Gretel is still one of the most powerful stories on the sensual perception of architecture, yet it remains different from our experience of buildings. First, the gingerbread house lacks the constraints of “real” architecture, which is expected to provide shelter and possess the quality of permanence. Second, its sensuous dimension remains in strong contrast with the dominant discourse of architecture."

cont'
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Italy and Food/Architecture Taste of the Past

While not all together relevent to the topic of food and architecture, this 30 minute video begins with the architect Pier Carlo Bontempi comparing the art of italian food culture with architecture and it's current lack of 'taste'. 

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Dubai in Food

On the centerpiece, engraved and written in English and Arabic with toasted almonds on a rice bed, it said: “Welcome to The Dubai Food Festival.”

This stunning installation of Dubai’s famous skyline and iconic buildings made entirely out of food....

But it also was a great temptation to want take a bite out of the Trade Center made of white and milk chocolate.

Paul Baker said the greatest challenge was that the entire food architecture of the edible Dubai skyline will not go bad, as it needs to stay in shape when it is being shipped to Dubai, and remain that way when it is on display during the Dubai Food Festival, which takes place from February 6-28, 2015.

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Food Safety Spoon

Designer Ernesto D Morales has proposed a spoon made out of magnifying glass as component of a series of absurd goods for his fictional firm Object Solutions (+ film).

The spoon, designed by Ernesto D Morales, is meant to allow the user to examine every single spot of a meal prior to consumption to guarantee the absence of glass, hair, bugs or other contaminants, and then consume the foods employing the exact same apply.

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Cape Town's Urban Agriculture Boom

In the last few years, Cape Town has witnessed the proliferation of hundreds of community gardens and urban farms. Abalimi is one organization that has worked to link the city's new micro-farmers with the types of middle-earners eager to fill their cupboards with local, organic produce.

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Genetic toolkits

Here, we get specialized on the topic of "architecture and food". Genetic Modification, or GMO crops are designed food. I am intrigued how they use "modified architectures" to describe the manipulation of plants. Plants have a structure, and technology has allowed us to see and understand that structure...and thus, we have been able to re-build our food - deconstruct and then reconstruct our dinner. 

"Ancient humans and early plant breeders recognized that selecting plants with modified architectures could have a major impact on the amount of fruit they produce. In general scientific terms, Lippman explains, "Plant architecture results from a delicate balance between vegetative growth – shoots and leaves – and flower production. To increase crop yields, we want plants to produce as many flowers and fruits as possible, but this requires energy – energy that is produced in leaves."

"Traditionally, plant breeders have relied on natural variation in plant genes to increase yield, but yield gains are plateauing," Lippman notes. "There is an immediate need to find new ways for plant breeders to produce more food." Worldwide more than 842 million people do not receive adequate nourishment, about 1 person in 8 alive today. The cost of food is expected to increase and hunger is likely to become more widespread as the global population expands to beyond 9 billion by 2050."

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Read more: Getting more out of nature: Genetic toolkit finds new maximum for crop yields http://www.nanowerk.com/news2/biotech/newsid=37951.php#ixzz3I79kyici 
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Food Hacks

I was familiar with "design hacks" more in terms of IKEA products than architecture or food. But, this act of 'hacking' - or taking something with an intended purpose or function and using it in an uncoventional way to recieve an intended, personal outcome - has been thrown around more and more. It's incredibly creative and can have an impact of personalization, customization, and optimization by getting more or better out of something that you already have. 

Design does this. We could learn a lot about architecture and design from hacks. Where are architecture hacks in our everyday world?

Here are some pretty cleaver food hacks.

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Growing on a Bridge

The Cloud Collective has installed an algae cultivation system on a highway overpass in Geneva, Switzerland, as a demonstration of the role urban settings can play in the production of food and plants.

Designed as part of the garden festival Genève: Villes et Champs, the ‘Culture Urbaine’ installation is made up of a closed system of transparent tubes connected to the exterior of the bridge.

Algae are cultivated inside the tubes, grown using only sunlight and C02.

The algae can be used to filter air, as combustible biomass or even as raw material for different cosmetic and alimentary products.

A steel structure running vertical to the bridge holds the system’s pumps, filters and solar panels and provides a written description of the project for pedestrians and cyclists.

The Cloud Collective hopes that the installation prompts future practices of reinterpreting existing infrastructures for the production of food and biomass.

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