Introduction

0:09

it’s a delight to have you both here amy francischini who is an artist and designer

0:15

and founder of future farmers in the 1990s 1995 maybe for some time wonderful

0:22

wonderful program uh lodi vranken is a lead architect and philosopher at

0:28

future farmers which is an interesting title that you don’t often find in a in a design

0:34

and artistic practice so really nice to have you both here and uh just to kind of give a summary of

0:40

what we’re going to talk about today we’re exploring the 250 things that an

0:45

architect should know it’s an essay by michael sorkin by the late michael sorkin

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and we’re taking one of those items which is item number 152

0:57

which states the effective design of your city on food miles for fresh fresh produce

1:04

so looking at through the lens of fresh produce and what immediately immediately comes to

1:10

mind often is this notion of food miles which calls them to question the relationship with local architecture

1:17

um but it also makes us wonder it’s not just about how far but is there a different relationship to

1:24

food perhaps and i think that’s where your project that you’ve been working on which is maybe a decade-long project now

1:30

the flatbread society and um as i understand it and you’ll have to correct me if i’m

1:36

wrong that it started as a public art project to kind of uh instigate maybe run a regeneration of a

1:42

container port on the oslo waterfront and i believe this started with the relationship of

1:48

grain somewhere around 2010 or 2011 and i really love that it brings

1:55

together farmers astronomists astronomers soil scientists bakers um so i guess the question would

2:03

be really what was the connection to growing and to ancient grains that you were

2:09

interested in exploring what’s the impetus behind this project

2:16

no what the connection of can you repeat the

flatbread society

2:22

question yes what’s the connection to growing and ancient grains that you’re interested in exploring with this

2:27

project what what was the impetus behind the flatbread society and in particular the connection to

2:34

growing

2:45

so the the interest in grains came from the fact that the site we were

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um we chose we were we were asked to work in one of the common areas within this

2:57

new development so they had in norway the idea of commons is quite strong it’s part of

3:02

their constitution very different than the united states and

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so we chose this common area near the waterfront but we were

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trying to find some sort of way to connect to the different communities in oslo so there’s a very

3:19

diverse it’s one of the more diverse cities in scandinavia and one thing that was held in common

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was flatbread some norwegian nationals are eating flatbread every morning and then there’s pakistani

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communities and iranian communities somalian communities also eating flatbread

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so we thought that that would be this kind of currency that we could use throughout the

3:42

imaginary and and practical um uh aspects of

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bringing people together and so we wanted to grow grains in this on this site um

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to actually you know manifest the material of bread

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and we thought it was very important to use seeds that were not um certified yet that were outside of

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the industrialized certification process and we found a farmer um

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very nearby who had gotten these ancient grains especially this rye grain back into

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production that hadn’t been in production for almost 100 years and so the symbol of these grains that

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you know are sitting outside of the industrial agricultural complex for us we’re a

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really strong symbol of the commons and that these this this matter should remain in the hands of many not

4:39

in the hands of few and that to start this project with a field of of these ancient grains that had been

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found in norway um would be a strong symbol of that and also a

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kind of uh you know looking at um this is not a

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cornfield project or that this is not a wheat field or no that was this is not a wheat field was in los angeles but um

5:05

i’m splanking on her name the great artist in new york who planted the wheat field yes um i know who you’re

5:12

talking about sorry friends but um just to think of the contrast of this

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city that was developing really fast with this image of a corn a grain field

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seemed like a great starting point um i mean there’s many layers to the

5:30

project but that was a beginning point to establish kind of an image and then we

5:35

we created this working group called flatbread society as a way to kind of

5:42

yeah establish a yeah a community or a society yeah it

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starts with the community in a sense which is interesting

5:57

i don’t it’s i don’t know if it started with the community

6:02

[Music] there was nobody there

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it was the beauty of emptiness that was present there ready to have all possible possibilities

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but yeah yeah yeah i mean it didn’t even have soil so we didn’t even have a microbial community

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right it was you know stone no one had lived there before so we weren’t dealing with a lot of issues

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that happen in public space where it’s being gentrified people have been displaced it was a

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fallow port for 20 years just ship containers on there that’s it

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shipping containers cargo kind of situation

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um farm of the king was gone the shipyard was gone there was it was

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empty ready to be i don’t know change so amy you mentioned

soil procession

7:13

that there was not even soil there and there’s a video that happens a little bit later on maybe a few

7:19

years later a procession of farmers carrying soil to oslo um and i really love that there was a

7:26

declaration of land use as part of this uh procession if you will so how did that how did that soil did

7:34

that soil procession connect to the flatbread society or was it a separate project and and what was its role in

7:42

creating this um flatbread society or the baking the bake house even what

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was the role of the soil procession well i think it started earlier

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in the beginning we had this um shed it was the first big house we

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built with three ovens for to make the it was a dome of a taque which is a traditional norwegian

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oven it’s

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to make more middle east kind red kind of bread so different kinds of

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flatbread there was one place and there was another thing there was a walking

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boat i was wandering around in the city with an oven making flat bread and so people got interested people came

8:34

because of the bird wandering around people came to the side saw this oven

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joined in in uh things that were programmed there was a programming internal programming going on for a

8:47

month i think but then people also started to to

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together and to say can we organize something about fermentation about i don’t know

8:59

it was a design group and people the university came and things like that so people started following the program

9:06

started to make their own program and that is where a first sort of community started to happen

9:14

but then with the sole procession i think another community other communities were at also the first

9:21

time the the beekeepers came and then the beast game and then of the grains game and

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things like that so there was a sort of community going on that then the sole position

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there was a next level extension to this earth to grow or cultivate this community i

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mean we from that first fake house there was a strong enough desire by locals to want to continue

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this and we got permission to do a a community farm but we had no soil and instead of

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bringing in soil that the university offered to give us clean soil and

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we thought that would be too easy in a way it would be great if we could in that

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you know and uh kind of animate all the peri-urban farmers to bring their soil in

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and to highlight their practice that they are feeding the city and also to not

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i think it’s i think urban farming can offset food production but i don’t think it’s a

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it’s gonna i don’t think urban farms are going to feed cities yet and i think it’s important

10:30

to also you know make that part of the conversation that we need

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these peri urban farmers they’re that they’re knowledgeable they have a practice that’s that’s valid so how do we create

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this site as a stage for for all kinds of farmers so we made handwritten postcards and

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sent them out to 50 or 60 farmers and asked if they would come on this day to

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the edge of the city with a symbolic amount of soil and march through the city to the site

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and lay out this this uh their soil on the site and 52 people responded

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and we met at the edge of the city and we did this procession and in the days

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before we started to think about okay this is real 52 farmers are coming we have to really

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pay homage and and honor their practice let’s let’s um we’re also going to have the

11:27

minister of culture coming and the minister of agriculture and some important people let’s

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establish this place as a kind of museum without walls a space that is a

11:39

cultural institution dedicated to art and agriculture because in this waterfront a lot of the

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cultural institutions were moving from the city to the waterfront so there was the opera

11:50

the moonk museum the library and now there’s the space called los ceter our space and so

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the farmers came together and we asked all the people in the procession to take a handful of each

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farmer’s soil and mix it together into this new culture um which we then laid out on the

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ground we named the site los ceter which means a common in the city um and um

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everybody signed this document the farmers the cultural ministers and it was

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it was felt like this was a moment of co-authorship of this space and that we weren’t

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actually we were just making manifest what was kind of already there as luna would say yeah do you have

12:38

anything else about slow perception

temporary big house

12:44

it’s it’s interesting in the sense that it’s bringing community together in a you

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know farmers don’t often get asked to participate in a public art project

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and yet this is very much about the connection of the farm and the city in the sense of the urban

13:01

and the rural coming together and it’s beautiful way that you’ve actually instigated that

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um i wonder if we could talk a bit more about the bake house um and loading you you mentioned a

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little bit about the temporary big house which it’s an interesting juxtaposition we’ve talked a

13:18

bit about the site already and how all the museums were moving in and the um opera and ballet building in

13:24

particular is quite well known uh designed by snohetta and it’s i believe you could the roof is quite

13:30

actively used so it’s a fairly prominent building but um

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in the middle of all of this growing architecture is a uh kind of a it’s a trapezoid of

13:43

two befores maybe and a structure that doesn’t really have walls and it’s very temporary what was the what was the impetus behind

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that what were you interested in doing in the creation of that structure that first structure and then what

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what came from that into the the more formal structure that you’ve developed

14:01

but a bit of the behind the scenes on what you were thinking with the with the design of the structure both the first one and the second one

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i think it’s a sort of action to to to to

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explore what is there and who is there and and and

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it was definitely the combination of this big house and this wandering walking boat that made us sort of

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the possibility to have a center with our walls that is our magnet but also to have a

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sort of walking center that surprises people when it

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walks by or it stops everything that attracts people and sort of

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because of the of the weirdness sort of tries to

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awaken the curiosity of people and in this awareness bring them together

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and make them join you in whatever you don’t know you’re going

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since there’s a surprise when a boat comes walking by you right

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and starts breaking so in the in that way it’s a sort of uh if you i don’t know it’s needed to talk

15:32

about architecture if you want to talk about architecture it’s sort of a risomatic architecture

15:38

that has uh no walls but they’re only a center that works like an attraction and so you don’t make community in a

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room where you gather but you make it as a as a sort of thing that blues i don’t

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know what is coming there together and at the same time then moves away to other places some

16:00

people move and so you start to make a sort of

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rhythmic structure that is the basis of a community that is not based on

16:13

specific places or a specific program but more about the wandering around

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and and and see what happens and trying to find out what is manifest and

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invisible and make the the thing that is invisible visible or

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manifest so that’s one thing but then at the same time the programming was going on

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under the roof of the and near the

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oven the oven videos and so these two together made this

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this community as a

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mixture of all kinds of people from all kinds of places and ideas

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so brought them together to to make this community i think and then you see what

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happens um then we did um i think it was the last programming we

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did it was called the

17:20

so how do you think this community so you you sort of create a community and it happens and

17:27

then does this community what is this community how does this community function and what kind of

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social structure comes with this community which is typical for that community that

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just arised and then within this social structure what kind of form physical form does that need and so

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there was a virtual video on

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how does this new big house attempt

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because we were allowed later they said like oh this is too beautiful and we got um

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support of the govern the community the government the city the city

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and so suddenly the temporary bakers could become a permanent baker so

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we saw this in fact this temporary or new command of community could become

18:30

a permanent community so how does this permanent community needs to do to organize itself

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and then what kind of forum do you need and there was a sort of this idea in the workshop

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form and function and it was something else it was form and function and alternative economies like how

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how can we um because the site is as a commons could not host any businesses

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and so many people in the first big house were like can i work here can i start a business here

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can i sell flat bread can i uh do fermentation workshops for money and

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and we’re like we need to find an alternative economy and that was really interesting we brought bankers

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there and librarians and young school educators to talk about

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different modes of exchange that could happen on the site and um there also we baked we actually

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had people mold their ideas of a permanent bakehouse and bake them in the oven and then we talked about them we had

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this table that was a continuum that they could lay them on and at one

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end was completely open everybody has keys and the other was closed only one key holder to think

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about how do you have access to the site how does the form lend itself to that that is also of course the idea of the

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community is that an open community or become our community and the rest is outsiders

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or how do you keep this community open and so there are start in these baked models of uh

20:04

different kinds like solid structures or balls that wander around the otherwise

20:10

nice nice bakings it’s really interesting to hear how you’ve taken something that’s a

bake house

20:17

simple strike and not a simple structure but a bake house is something that has allowed all of this engagement all

20:24

this exploration around economies um political

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you know power structures and power dynamics all of these things that make community exist is explored within the realm of a

20:37

place where you’re big bread that’s really beautiful and i’d love to ask kind of a follow-up

20:44

question which is around um we’ve been talking about community and you’d mentioned that there were

20:50

different kinds of flatbreads because it’s a very diverse um city and there are all kinds of you

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know there’s from eritrea afghanistan whatever all these different types of breads um and

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i found a quote uh amy that that you had said that the bake house is not where communities meet but where

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difference can meet and i’m very interested that was slowed

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that concept is is very interesting because we don’t often think about how difference comes together we think of

21:25

community as homogeneous and so i’m curious

21:31

i think it’s a combination of sort of having a program and going for your program but at the

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same time especially um losing your program

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the the the and that’s why i go back to the walking structure in city it is a weird thing

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where you sort more or less lose it like what is this it’s not

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like oh i joined this because i have the same ideology or i have the same ideas or i

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have the same revolution going on i think it’s not like that it’s a bird that walks by and there’s baking bread so

22:12

you sort of tips in something you don’t know and you lose it a little bit and there

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is i think an openness for coming together

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and have a small moment of of of pushing aside your beliefs your convictions your

22:32

politic um interest and things like that at the moment it’s gone and so at the moment you can talk openly

22:38

and so you at the moment and in a short moment you can make it maybe become friends or community or whatever and if

22:45

they’re lost you get this difference that is going on and if that lasts

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you get this difference that is that is

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get established and so when we baked these different models it was also

23:04

trying to find out how can you keep this

23:10

sphere of of openness because yeah soon you become a group

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you become friends and those are the good ones and those are the bad ones or those are

23:23

insiders and those are the outsiders and then someone wants to join but that doesn’t really fit and things

23:29

like that and so it becomes a little bit problematic it happens like that of course but it’s

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it’s it’s it’s trying to find a way

23:43

to create openness [Music]

23:49

i in know yeah and i think there’s something about the the site really has no leader

23:58

there is i mean we were fortunate to be able to hire a full-time farmer who is i would

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say kind of the pillar but in a way it’s too much work for one person and there’s been

24:11

this way that different projects have rooted themselves at the site and so there it there are

24:18

different things going on there’s different facebook pages for each group um there’s hidden communities that said

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oh it got too popular there so we made our little subgroup at the site we meet secretly um but there’s enough like there’s some

24:33

strange balance with the place kind of having a life of its own that can’t really be named or controlled that

24:40

allows a lot of different types of projects and people to be there and it’s still a strange place it’s

24:46

still uh it’s like in the middle of these freeways there’s these

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towers coming out of the center which are exhaust towers for the freeway it’s at the water so when people come

24:58

there for the first time they’re really like how did this happen how did i end up here and and i think when people enter a place

25:04

where a question like that begins then there’s an openness

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and i hope we can do that in future projects to keep the surprise

25:17

always surprising people and ourselves we have time we had a lot of time in that project

25:22

yeah yeah it was about a decade is that right yeah yeah i want to ask one last

human settlements

25:29

question which um load i i noticed that you had uh studied your

25:35

masters was uh through a un course on human settlements and architecture and philosophy

25:41

and i’m i’m curious about if there’s a connection with the un global report on human human settlements

25:48

that came out where there was a discussion of uh we planning must change we need to adapt and i don’t

25:56

know if you have any thoughts on how this part this is this is going to feel like a really heavy

26:01

large big question and i’m sorry i don’t mean it to be that way but i’m curious to know what your

26:07

thinking is on how what the relationship is with the work of the flatbed society and

26:13

the future of what we should be do you know what should we be doing with our communities how should we be thinking about urbanism and urban

26:20

planning differently and does this shine a light in any way from your view well that was a long time ago that was

26:26

in 93 i did you and said i think a lot has changed because

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a lot has changed about the ideas of things but i think i like to speak

26:42

about flabbridge society as [Music]

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an exercise a small maybe a topic a topic

26:54

exercise in reverse planning because normally you have

27:02

the great lines like what should the region be there is it is

27:08

industrial there is like agriculture there is the city in the city and some suburbs the great lines and then you have more

27:14

specific regulations of the city about urban

27:19

planning and things like that um like the slope of europe for example here in belgium are

27:24

the the windows the material use the colors even i don’t know and then you have the

27:30

architect who knows everything comes to the people and then you say i would like to have a house

27:37

and the architect’s like i know what you need so then the architect makes the design trying to understand

27:43

what you need if he does that and then in the end you you have to live in it so it’s it’s

27:51

and what we tried to do there was first start to gather these people let them come

27:58

together and see what happens and then out of that how does that function how should that function and

28:05

how sweet and so what we did was in the end we were not allowed to build there so we

28:12

had to change sort of building regulations to to to to allow that to do that

28:18

and in the end um it becomes a sort of an example

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of how things could happen so you you really work in in changing

28:30

habits and regulations um although that’s not the aim or maybe

28:36

it is but yeah and and it starts from the idea start with your community first

28:42

because they know they know that maybe they don’t know but they they they organize themselves in a

28:49

special way and it’s from that you have to start and not from the opposite thing and of course you can do your research

28:56

as an architect and things like that but i think it’s more interesting not to do your research

29:01

and then build something for the community that is coming but first build your community

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and then see what happens so maybe it’s an impossible strategy

29:13

although something is happening that’s going away

29:19

oh it’s going away there’s a picture on lotus oh screen of the early days of

29:24

flatbread society that was perfect just these mounds of cement and

29:31

some grain and yeah but if it’s if it’s just an art project or

29:36

just an idea that we tried there it was more than an idea still maybe it can contaminate something

29:45

and make people think about how urban planning should change

29:52

or can change not should change but can change so yeah there is maybe something

29:58

interesting here yeah that’s a nice concept to think about into

urban planning

30:04

amy i don’t know if you have anything you want to add i didn’t mean to jump in no no i i think it’s

30:11

i mean i don’t i don’t know anything about urban planning really formally but i think um within brv

30:19

puerto rico was the name of this redevelopment area and i think um

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it was maybe bigger and more ambitious than they thought and i think we kind of inserted

30:32

ourselves into a little area that they didn’t really know like oh that’s going to happen in 20 years but i think

30:37

maybe it’s interesting for development projects to leave space for the unknown or to leave a

30:44

space that people can try things out and before

30:49

they make the master plans even yes because we were inside of a master plan

30:54

and we even asked you know can we not meet around these 3d models of the future can we meet in the site itself

31:01

with the people who are going to be there right and um and they said oh that’s messy

31:07

and that’s gonna take longer and we’re like well we’re okay with that we have time um

31:16

but it’s yeah i think it takes a particular situation to have the openness to an organic process and

31:24

something that doesn’t really make sense and that can be a staging area for new ideas yeah

reverse planning

31:30

well and to give the the space for it to evolve and to iterate on its

31:37

own with the people and with the community that comes together as they so choose that’s you’re right it’s very messy and yet

31:43

what comes out of it is so beautiful and resonates with people in a very different way than something

31:49

that was planned for my 3d model for a vision for the future might have might have been able to achieve

31:56

yeah and and i think every sort of planning and of course you need to planning but

32:01

still every sort of planning starts with an ideology with a concept how the world should be and

32:09

i don’t say that those constant concepts are always bad there are bad concepts but also good

32:14

concepts but you think the world and then you implement that in your architecture or something

32:19

well there should be

32:25

a start of thinking about an inverse way of doing that so that that that you change your social

32:31

interaction and out of that you you built your environment or the the place you live in

32:36

it’s sort of a discussion between hegel and marx something going on and one is turning

32:42

the one on on top of it yeah so that is i think

32:48

what is happening i think the boats are going together you can’t live without planning

32:54

but still um we have enough planning so maybe we can focus on on the

33:01

university like how can we see how we can change and rethink social

33:07

interaction and that is not only humans because the site is full of other stuff plants

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bees and then let the out of that grow the the the

33:21

formal result of your of your

33:27

interaction yeah this has been a really enchanting

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conversation and when we thought we were going to talk about food miles on fresh produce we did

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actually talk about it in a very interesting way because i think we were able to bring not only the idea

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of reverse planning and not doing a pre-meditated activity but also the idea of the

33:49

connection between people and the food that’s grown the food that’s baked

33:54

all of those things it’s about the people that live there and the intermingling in the mix of the communities and the differences

34:01

as you pointed out when describing the community um aspects so i think this has been really

34:07

wonderful and if we wanted to think think about the antithesis to industrial food production

34:12

this definitely points away away from the industrial food production that we rely on it’s not just about measuring

34:19

distance of transportation miles that food is on a truck but there are other things that are involved

34:25

so i want to thank you both for this i don’t know if you have any last words but um no i thank you for having such good

34:33

questions and picking up on things as we went along

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