Text: Cosmin Caciuc
A big heavy topic for Expo Milano 2015: “Feeding the Planet. Energy for Life”. Its subdivisions have keywords such as tradition, creativity, innovation, technology, education, health, in reference to world food production and distribution; these might sound pompous and somewhat inert compared to the actual modest situation of a polluted planet, with many hungry mouths, troubled by conflicts and anxiety, and squandering, often irresponsible mankind.
A quick glance over newspaper headlines can be depressing: “Half of the world’s food goes to trash”, “Over the holidays, Bucharesters produce a week’s worth of rubbish”, “Ministry of Agriculture: Each year a Romanian citizen throws away 97.5 kg of food”, “Do you want to save energy? Stop wasting food”…
At this social scale of nutrition and food problems, solutions, as well as creativity (especially in architecture and design), could be booming. They could just become relational, instead of formal: on foodbanking.org the key concepts are hunger relief, link, interconnected lifeline, community asset. In short: satisfy the appetite and waste less through global, well-organized solidarity.
Organizing is closely related to designing and prospecting the future, so that the designers’ creativity would flourish in the stringent context of current processes and situations: you find a solution where you least expect it, spontaneously discover a new craft, leave space for improvisation or for something that grows naturally. This somewhat weakens “official” intervention and its prefabricated aesthetic to allow a collateral transformation, another process, a surprising life asset exceeding the original founding action…
Maybe the pavilions of participant countries at such world fairs should look more boldly towards the reassessment of the structural role of architecture in a social and prospective sense, as an expressive, flexible and economic grid / network, allowing itself to be populated by new processes, improvisation, solutions for food and packaging issues, for smarter consumption and recycling. I believe we can talk about food and even about tradition beyond all convenient stereotypes and well-known archaic references
In the next issue, we’ll approach the issue of the Romanian Pavilion at Expo Milano 2015. Until then, I’ll just list older the examples of La Terenuri from Mănăştur, Cluj (#115), The Vegetable Basket (Coșul cu legume) (#119), Oily (Uleiosul) (#120) and, in this issue, Dan Vodnar, a Romanian scientist from Cluj, in charge of the project for antimicrobian food packages, who received a bronze medal at Proinvent 2012. And I wonder: how would they envision a different-looking national pavilion?
* Illustration: Sebastian Luca [bast] for Uleiosul.com campaign
