ETHZ Diploma Project
FS 2021

Charlotte Reuse

Dancing together apart re-evaluates the accessibility to food in cities, including the socio-cultural aspect around food rituals and spaces in communities. A proposition in three acts articulates different scales on the site of Engrosmarkt, from events to architectural interventions, as an ongoing research challenging the publicness of the industrial site.

The interventions gradually disrupt, alter, and modify some existing part of the site while using and misusing what is already built. The six physical infiltrations simultaneously happen with the emergence of a community life next to the sellers and truck drivers. Programs implicating each point of the city food chain arise alongside the market. Engrosmarkt becomes a laboratory working together but still apart with the existing flows.

Food & the City

Cities were shaped by the flow of goods, and those traces still remain. Markets and places of exchange were at the center of the city, not only as a geographical anchor but also stood as political spaces, acting as a common ground around a necessity, food. The privatisation of public spaces also led to the slow disappearance of markets in profit of shopping centers. If the idea behind those places was about the consumer’s experience, the social aspect of the food processes as part of the city got hidden behind a passive attitude of consumption. The fallouts of this shift are such that social inequalities, unpaid labor, and the degradation of the ecosystem are all linked to the food that ends up in our plate. The separation of the activity and the subjects, as a symptom of the néo-libéral economy, leads to treating food as a commodity, and not a valuable ressource anymore.

Wochenmarkt an der Bahnhofstrasse, Zürich, 1930

Zürich’s food production
In Zürich, 10% of the land is used for farming. The periphery has a certain closeness to the means of production, with possibilities to buy directly from the farms. The land is divided between communal gardens (blue), city-owned farms (beige), alternative participatory farms (red), or private farming fields (green).

Yvonne Lötscher, from the Nachhaltige Ernährung department of Zürich, insists on the fact that not only the production chains need to evolve, but that all the habits regarding food consumption need to be questioned to achieve a sustainable system. Furthermore, projects such as Cargo Souterrain raise awareness concerning the flow of goods. Do we really need to make everything move everywhere, on behalf of the biggest companies ?

The project challenges food accessibility in cities as a bottom-up approach, exploring the potential of food as a social factor but also as a necessity and a human right.

Herdern, Engrosmarkt & its actors

Herdern is characterized by its logistic aspect, the trucks are omnipresent and make any human presence out of scale. The site of Engrosmarkt is chosen for the intervention, as its ground belongs to the city and therefore could see a change in its use over time, compared to private-owned sites such as Migros. If the activity is high and electric during the night, the site is empty during the day. One truck passing by, no one in the area, birds are singing. Facing the new quartier of the Hardturm Stadium, the Engrosmarkt ground has a potential to be open to the public and semi-public, as a cohabitation over time with the actors of the market.

Proposition

The proposition aims at infiltrating the site, disrupting in some good and bad ways the conservative activity that happens in the buildings and around them. Making the food more legible in the city of Zürich could start there. Physical and non-physical interventions will gradually disrupt Engrosmarkt. The project is about inserting programs of the food production, consumption and distribution chains in an existing flow and system. It could encourage a new societal organisation based on equity and solidarity, somehow re-inventing commoning as a process directly challenging capitalist values and society norms.

Script, Care, Disruptions

The method used for the project as three simultaneous chapters challenging the site and its buildings in different scales. One can’t happen without the other. As a proposition for short and long-term occupation, the project also states that for an architectural intervention to work among the society, there’s a need for other kinds of appropriation. Coming together, those three parts show a scenario for a public appropriation of industrial sites in cities.

Script

How can a story give ways to a new reality? The event is about offering a common ground and visibility as a first intervention on site.

A non-profit association is founded, and events start to happen. The accessibility should not depend on the people’s financial means. They are about making food visible and promoting it as a social event in itself.