Foodscapes

Tokyo’s postwar densification pushed food growing and production to the city’s periphery, fragmenting society from the source of its food. As Japan now faces degrowth, vacant sites provide an opportunity to bring food production back to the city. “Foodscapes” aspires to bring the realms of sustainable food growing, production, and consumption closer together—rendering these processes visible and reconnecting people to ecological processes in the urban context.

The project includes katsuobushi production, a restaurant, a community kitchen, and an adjacent garden; the programs’ processes are interconnected to create a closed loop system within the project. Katsuobushi is used to make the restaurant’s dashi and the byproducts of production are used for fertilizer to grow vegetables for the restaurant. The architecture supports the connections between these processes, the visitors, and the visitors and food production. The production space is split and stacked, with restaurant and community kitchen space interspersed. A central stair organizes and separates the programs planimetrically while creating visual and physical connections sectionally. Suspended horizontal extensions take advantage of vacant vertical space in the densely developed city.

Typology: Urban Food Production
Program: Katsuobushi (bonito flakes) production, community kitchen, restaurant, garden, shop, cafe
Scale: 245 square meters (combined site areas)
Material: Concrete, Steel