FLW - foodie commune

"One part of that vision is to return Taliesin to a fully diversified farm; contoured rows crops cover the Welsh hillside, hundred-year-old trees are tapped for maple syrup, grapevines produce fruit table wine, and cows freely graze on the pasture before being milked or slaughtered for meat. But Taliesin is also meant to be a self-sustaining community of chefs, farmers, and architects contributing to the property as they once did as part of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fellowship Program, established in 1932. According to a 1934 brochure the program had fellows “farming, planning, working, kitchenizing, and philosophizing in voluntary co-operation in an atmosphere of natural loveliness they are helping to make eventually habitable.”

Taliesin worked closely in conjunction with Taliesin West, which Wright built in the McDowell Mountains of present-day Scottsdale in 1938 as a winter retreat for himself and the majority of the Wisconsin residents. Throughout the colder months, eggs, milk, butter, cheese, and preserves were sent by rail from those looking after the farm to their peers in Arizona. Wyer plans to revive this tradition this season with a shipment of preserved produce.

Sounds kind of like a commune, right? It closely resembled one. So much so that shortly before Wright’s death in 1959, a Wisconsin circuit judge determined that Taliesin was in fact operating for the sole benefit of Wright and not as a non-profit organization. Whether Taliesin was an Emersonian utopia or labor camp is still up for debate, along with the stigma surrounding the property’s existence. “Throughout the whole history of this place, they were so isolated that people in town shunned them, called them socialists, and didn’t want to get involved with them. They didn’t know what was going on with them and didn’t want to know,” Dungue says. “I think that carried through history and people still don’t know.”


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big bee hives

BGHJ Architects in Charlottetown are designing “bee houses” that look like animated creatures and will stand about 12 feet high that will house four beehives at the Farm Centre.

The beehive project aims to educate Islanders on the importance of honeybees and to bring awareness about their situation.


Some experts say one in every three bites of food we eat is made possible by bees and other pollinators.

The BGHJ firm is interested in the activation of downtown Charlottetown and strengthening the core of city, making it better place to live, said architect Shallyn Murray

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fake food

"Developed especially for children and families, Guixé’s large-scale, custom-designed space will combine the artist’s own graphics with design challenges and hands-on activities for young people that encourage a rethinking of the familiar foods that we eat each day and sprout new ideas for food concepts and flavours."

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Student design - eco - food cart

Students of Jamia Millia Islamia have built an eco-friendly food vending cart which has provisions for waste disposal and solar power generation. The cart was one of the submit showcased at the Festival of Innovations at Rashtrapati Bhawan, New Delhi.  The project, which the university is in process of patenting, was among the six entries selected out of 114 sent for presentation at the recently concluded Festival.

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NYC's food web

Over the past year, Open House New York’s The Final Mile has explored the architecture of New York City’s food system. From the markets of the Hunts Point Food Distribution Center to the food halls of Brooklyn, The Final Mile has explored how the spaces in which food is produced, distributed, and consumed have helped shape the city and our experiences of it.

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Food Better - Harvard

Throughout the academic year, the Harvard community focuses on the food system and how to improve it – how to grow better, eat better, shop better, conserve better . . . how to Food Better. In 2014-15, the Harvard Innovation Lab hosted a year-long Deans' Food System Challenge, in which students from across the university were invited to develop innovative solutions to make our food system more healthy and sustainable. In conjunction with the Challenge, the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic, Harvard University Dining Services, Food Literacy Project, and Harvard Office for Sustainability opened a community-wide dialogue about how we can Food Better, which included events, field trips and more. These events continue on into the 2015-2016 school year.

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lecture - cheng

How does architecture and design influence our relationship with food?  Join architect Christy Cheng to explore how the catalytic nature of food and drink can be used to redefine architecture and design characteristics.  Does food inspire what our buildings and urban spaces look like? Do we eat the food that is curated by our surroundings?

Christy will discuss her work with the Alimentary Design studios at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and her latest project, the West Louisville Food Port. Alimentary Design explores how the fundamentals of food can be used to redefine architecture and urban design typologies. This field of design examines everything from farming and harvesting to consumers and waste and all the ingredients in between.

Is the future of architecture and urban design appetising?
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dumpster house

How to get students thinking about their environmental footprints?

Jeff G. Wilson and his students at Huston-Tillotson University in Austin, Tex., retrofitted a garbage container into a cozy pad that he lived in for an entire year. It was, he says, “a radical experiment in what it would mean to live on, and in, less” — specifically, 33 square feet. He moved out last February but the experiment continues.

Nine educators have since taken up residency for up to a week to see what it’s like to live without running water. Cooking is on a camping stove. But there is electricity. To battle interior heat that rises to over 130 degrees in Texas’s sweltering summers, the bin had to be connecting to the grid so air-conditioning could be installed. There’s now a TV and an overhead light. But it’s still tight quarters.

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Livable Cities

9th Making Cities Liveable Conference 2016
The 9th Making Cities Liveable Conference will be held at the Pullman Melbourne on the Park from the 27-28 June 2016. The Making Cities Liveable Conference supports improving the quality of life in our capitals and major regional cities, focusing on healthy, sustainable, resilient and liveable cities, with discussions on improving the quality of life in our capitals and major regional cities.

2016 Program Topics

The Conference Program will include an extensive range of topics with Keynotes, Concurrent Sessions, Case Studies, Panel Discussions and Poster Presentations. Topics will include:

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Food Trends for 2016

CHICAGO, Nov. 2, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Kendall College, Chicago's top ranked culinary and hospitality school is unveiling its predictions for 2016 Food and Beverage Trends for America's tastemakers – millennials. This generation considers food as social currency – whether they want to be the first to discover the "next cronut" or tout their cooking chops by experimenting with a new global cuisine or cooking technique. To help these trendsetters, distinguished Kendall culinary and hospitality faculty analyzed industry and global insights to cook up the five biggest trends they anticipate seeing in 2016.

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• Pulses: Bigger and Better than Quinoa? Pulses are a time-tested staple in many international cuisines including Indian, Mexican and Spanish, but now they are making their way to plates in America. In fact, the 65th UN General Assembly declared 2016 the International Year of Pulses. So what exactly are Pulses? They are grain legumes that span from the more familiar lentils and chickpeas and the more exotic dried beans such as pigeon peas and run beans. Pulses are not only a trendy source of protein, but also an interesting option for those passionate about other hot-button food issues: local sourcing, economic value, and sustainable practices, for example. Kendall's own Chef Chris Koetke thinks we'll start to see pulses pop up on more restaurant menus next year. 
• Austrian Red Wines: According to Kendall College's Beverage Professor and Sommelier John Peter Laloganes, millennials will look beyond the traditional Pinot Noir, Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon to new and unique red wine varieties from Austria. The region offers a trio of distinctly unique, indigenous red wines: Zweigelt, St. Laurent and Blaufrankisch. These new varieties can range anywhere from $12 to $35 and will be featured more prominently in retail and on wine lists in 2016.
• DIY Food Plating: With the popularity of Instagram and Pinterest, food plating is no longer just for restaurants. Chef Elaine Sikorski of Kendall College predicts home cooks will begin to focus on the way their dishes look in addition to the way they taste. Millennials can elevate the visual appeal of their dishes by plating on an unusual surface such as a salt block or wood and experimenting with a few different colors, textures and sizes.
• Sous Vide Goes Mainstream: Restaurants have used sous vide technology for decades, but now sous vide tools are becoming more widely available for cooks at home according to Kendall's Chef Brian Schreiber. The cooking method includes vacuum packing a meal and cooking it in hot water for an evenly cooked and flavorful result. Sous vide machines can be found everywhere from premium cooking stores to mainstream retail chains. Now everyone can enjoy a perfectly tender steak and a juicy duck breast!
• Haute Eclairs: Kendall's baking and pastry instructor Chef Melina Kelson-Podolsky predicts the humble eclair will be revamped for the first time in 30 years by infusing interesting and unexpected fillings from mango yogurt to salted caramel to goat cheese. These delicacies are starting to appear in premiere pastry shops in New York and will continue to gain popularity throughout the year.

Honey and Bunny

How can food designers introduce new behaviors to consumers? How can they move from ideas and projects to actual production? What is the best way introduce daring, paradigm-shifting innovation into the food industry, which is often hesitant to take risks and ends up proposing more of the same, often just in larger quantities? And how can these innovations become part of larger cultural and social visions?

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Expos end...

The towers are the heart of the Swiss Pavilion. Visitors will be invited to discover Switzerland – the diversity of products and values which underlie the success of the Swiss approach – by engaging in a fun exploration of the towers. Switzerland wishes to take part in Expo 2015 as  an active, caring and socially responsible stakeholder in the area of food and sustainable development. 

The journey through the towers is guided by this leitmotif, thus prompting visitors to reflect – on the basis of their own personal experience – on the global availability of food and sustainable development throughout the food value chain. Visitors will be free to take away or consume any amount of the products. How much will be left for later visitors – and for how long – will be determined by the consumer behaviour and level of awareness of each visitor.
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MOFAD

The Museum of Food and Drink (MOFAD) is creating the world's first large-scale food museum with exhibits you can eat.

MOFAD will be a global leader in food education, featuring innovative exhibits and programs that show how exciting it is to learn and care about the culture, history, science, production, and commerce of food and drink. Imagine a place where you can use an Aztec kitchen, see cereal made before your eyes, decode food marketing, taste West African street food, make Chinese hand-pulled noodles, learn about agriculture and composting, and see how the body digests a sandwich—all in one museum.

In 2013, MOFAD debuted its first explosive mobile exhibition, BOOM! The Puffing Gun and the Rise of Cereal. The exhibition, which featured a 3,200-pound breakfast cereal puffing machine, drew accolades from media outlets such as The New Yorker and The Wall Street Journal.

MOFAD Lab, the organization's first brick-and-mortar home, will open in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn on October 28, 2015. In this space, MOFAD will design and showcase its exhibit concepts as it works toward opening the full museum in New York City by 2019. Join the MOFAD mailing list to stay updated on upcoming exhibitions and programs

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Food Axis

Blending architectural and social history with the necessity―and the passion―for food, this engaging new book attempts to understand the development of the American house by viewing it through one very specific lens: the food axis. Taking in far more than the kitchen, author Elizabeth Collins Cromley explores all areas of food management within the home―preparation, cooking, consumption, and disposal. Her food axis implies a network of related spaces above and below ground, both attached to the house and separate from it. 

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Fayetteville 2030: Food City Scenario

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — The University of Arkansas Community Design Center’s project Fayetteville 2030: Food City Scenario has won a 2015 Honor Award in the Analysis and Planning category from the American Society of Landscape Architects. The project seeks to build food sustainability by promoting local urban agriculture.

Food City Scenario is featured in the October issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine and will be exhibited at the ASLA Annual Meeting and Expo in Chicago in November. This is the Community Design Center’s seventh ASLA Honor Award.

The Community Design Center led an interdisciplinary team at the University of Arkansas for Food City Scenario, which speculates on what Fayetteville might look like if the city’s growth integrated local urban food production sustainable enough to create self-sufficiency. Fayetteville’s population of 75,000 is expected to double over the next 20 years. In addition, although the region is the most prosperous in the state, it also has one of the nation’s highest child hunger rates.

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Architecture fighting obesity

A 1950s-era elementary school in rural Buckingham, Virginia was redesigned to help kids lose weight. The architects worked directly with public health researchers to change a long list of details based on current research, from designing a kitchen with dedicated storage space for local, seasonal fruit, to placing healthy meals at kids'-eye level in the checkout line. In a teaching kitchen, third-graders can learn to make healthy meals from the foods they grow in the school garden.

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Agritecture

Your source for vertical farming and urban agriculture news, business, jobs, and design.

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Urban Agriculture

Book: http://www.verticalfarm.com/

Food Cart + Mobility + Social Causes

Geneva-based architect Aurélie Monet Kasisi has designed a mobile stand based on street-food carts to travel around Switzerland as a promotional vehicle for a suicide prevention organisation.

"The mobile units often used to serve food or sell various goods host a small collective experience within the city," she said. "That is exactly what I wanted the mobile stand to generate in Swiss public spaces."

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Milan Food Expo - romantizing food

Policy-makers have shied away from targeting agriculture because food is a personal issue for many citizens; the agricultural lobby in Brussels is very well organised because it’s been around since the early days of European integration; agriculture is also seen by many with romantic eyes.

“We have a very idyllic image of agriculture, but that romantic image no longer exists in many places”, noted Eickhout.

Romantic picture of agriculture
Most of the 14 national pavilions in Milan which this website saw from the inside, had romantic touches which don’t correspond with reality.

Almost three-quarters of the world's poultry products, and half of all pork, were created by industrial sized farming. In the EU, just 5.7 percent of agricultural land in 2012 was used for organic farming.

But the Spanish pavilion, for example, showed scenic videos of a shepherd and his flock, and of families eating together, accompanied by serene music. Spain is “Europe's kitchen garden”, an explanatory text noted.

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