Feeding Imaginations

Groundlab was invited to participate with a cartographic research piece and counter-object to the XVII Spanish Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism (BEAU). The biennale was curated by Ander Bados Sesma and Miguel Ramón López, under the title Common Flows. The team was assigned to the environmental flow category. In addition, there were categories for material, energy, people, and data flows.

Under the title “Feeding Imaginations,” the cartography adopted an intentional multiscalar perspective, foregrounding the planetary dimensions of environmental flows in the Global North. The cartography examines the socio-environmental flows of pig macrofarms in Spain, one of Europe’s top exporters. Drawing upon research from socio-environmental activist organisations, in addition to national GIS datasets, a comprehensive, multiscalar critical cartography was produced showing global inputs and outputs, revealing conflicts with nitrate pollution, protected areas, deforestation, displacement, small-scale farmers, transport infrastructure and farm density. The cartography is illustrated by photos from Catara Rego Abraira of the Cinco Villas area in Aragon, Spain.

As a counter-object, the map is accompanied by a collection of recipes for change to inspire alternative food systems, feeding imaginations. Five Landed Community Kitchens, a term coined by Chiara Tornaghi, are presented as forms of organisation, decommodification, resistance and land relationships that counter the mapped agro-industrial flows.

Thanks to Lucia Escrigas and Claudia de Sas Trujillo from Fundación RIA for the Cocina Comunitaria Muimenta; Capri Jiang and the Granville Community Kitchen team; to Haleh Moravej, the Northern Lily CIC community and Chiara Tornaghi for making this connection; to Abrahan Rodriguez Buendia from Cooperación Comunitaria and the agroecological cooperative  Jcananotic; to Surman and Weston architects, Huilong Hu and Yi Lin (AALU 2024-25) and the Rooted in Food programme from Hackney School of Food. Thanks to all for their generosity in sharing their experiences, testimonies, graphic material, recipes and texts, and for being such a significant source of inspiration.

Thanks to BEAU XVII and RIBA Research Fund 2025