CYCLE 11
FOOD ENGINES: LABORATORY OF OVERLOOKED GEOGRAPHIES
21.09.2024 - 18.01.2025
RESEARCH: FUTURE FOODSCAPES RESEARCH UNIT AND PROYECTOR
For too long, architecture has centered its gaze on the metropolis, neglecting and rendering invisible the landscapes and territories that make urban life possible. Yet cities are not isolated entities; they are the product of territorial and energetic reassemblies that transcend metropolitan boundaries, linking architecture to a web of diverse ecologies. Amid debates on energy, migration, and the environment, food often remains an afterthought—even though the way we produce, distribute, and consume it drives societies, shapes metropolises, and terraforms geographies more profoundly than any other energy source.
Through three interrelated research vectors, "Food Engines" examines Mexico's historical and contemporary relationship with food, speculating on the role of technology and politics in future agro-food systems, and exploring how architecture and culture contribute to their evolution. By focusing on the landscapes and architectures that feed the country, an intricate amalgam of artisanal and industrial processes is explored, where hyper-local production takes place amidst the standardization of the global market; as well as the maintenance of pre-Hispanic agro-architectures, through colonial territorial transformations and community tenure models that endure between official and self-regulated economies.
Therefore, this exhibition is not about food, but about a laboratory that brings together the systemic, political and ecological implications of the architectural substrate that makes its existence possible. Where, with each meal, palates are connected to a multitude of places that operate as remote engines: supermarkets and tianguis, greenhouses and milpas, farms and ejidos, warehouses and logistics networks, kitchens, canteens and trains, cold chains and stone silos, and even cities in landfills, which, together, form a distributed apparatus that allows the reassembly of the earth's crust into the building blocks of human life.
CREDITS
ART DIRECTION FOODSCAPES
Eduardo Castillo-Vinuesa y Manuel Ocaña.
CURATORS
Future Foodscapes Research Unit (FFRU): Eduardo Castillo-Vinuesa, Irene Domínguez Serrano, Pedro Sanguino, Carlo Udina
Proyector: Tania Tovar Torres y Juan Carlos Espinosa Cuock
PROJECT MANAGER
Paula Eslava
CURATORIAL COORDINATION
Karina Caballero González y Camila Ulloa Vásquez
TECHNICAL COORDINATION
Teresa Lascasas (AC/E), Área de Difusión. Subdirección General de Arquitectura y Edificación (MIVAU)
CURATORIAL ASSISTANTS
Ricardo Betancourt Buelna, Laura Méndez Pacheco, Mayela Pérez Dimas, Valeria Servin Galindo.
RESEARCH PLATFORM
Marcia Belén Ardiles, Eduardo Castillo-Vinuesa, Irene Domínguez Serrano, Mireia Figueras Cortés, Claudia López García, Pedro Sanguino, Carlo Udina.
EXHIBITORS
DOMA, Adriana David Ortiz Monasterio, Colectivo Co.merr, Dea López, Samuel Morales, Saúl Becerra, César García Aldape, Marcos Betanzos, Cristobal Ascencio y Alba Serra, Basurama, Yosuif Giyo, Aaryin Iljames, Irene Domínguez Serrano (FFRU), Pedro Sanguino (FFRU) Carlo Udina (FFRU), Marcia Belén Ardiles (FFRU) Mireia Figueras Cortés (FFRU) Claudia López García (FFRU)
VISUAL IDENTITY
Naranjo-Etxeberria
“Food Engines: Laboratory of Overlooked Geographies” is organized by Ministerio de Vivienda y Agenda Urbana (MIVAU)
Acción Cultural Española AC/E
With the support of Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores, Unión Europea y Cooperación.
TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary/ TBA21
European Climate Foundation
Fundación Arquia