Food Stories:
Oslo

The city needs a new diet, new recipes, and new stories. So what's your food story?

Foodstories : Oslo
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“Through farming, land-use change, packaging, transport, food preparation and waste disposal, the global food system is responsible for approximately 20-30% of global human-made greenhouse gas emissions.1 Food Stories questions the way globalized agricultural systems operate and proposes self-sufficient alternatives. Bio-dynamic farms, urban agriculture, allotments, cooperatively owned farms and others are explored as ways of feeding a growing global population while reducing negative environmental impacts.

Actors within Oslo's local food system were interviewed as a form of research to gain a better understanding of the social, economic, and spatial dimensions with regards to food production in the city. The actors ranged from small local parcel gardens, educational initiatives, roof top farms, dumpster divers, hydroponic operations, to historic farms, among many others.The outcome is quite clear. Oslo, or better yet, Norway needs a systemic change with regards to how it produces and manages its food; from farming, to harvesting, to delivering, to selling, to expiring, to composting - it needs to manage its food with circularity at the forefront. From an architectural and ecological perspective, urban farming has a great potential to address challenges the city and country face today due to the failures of the current food system; resulting in culinary illiteracy among Oslo's inhabitants, engendering monocultural farming, loss of biodiversity, pollution, and food waste.Food production is a basic human need like access to fresh water.It is also not only a political matter but a spatial one that can offer sustainable social, economical, and pedagogical services for the future of the city. How can we plan for food like we plan for other services such as; transportation, education, water, and health? Our goal from this work has been to gain a better understanding of the alternatives that are causing a shift within the local food system. As designers we can use this knowledge to plan and create future urban environments that encourage basic practices, such as growing food, for the betterment of society.