Food Futures explored the public space and its relationship to contemporary food systems in the neighborhood of the Pâquis in Geneva.

For centuries, food systems played a central role in shaping urban public life. Communal ovens, markets, thermopolia, and community gardens were essential components of the city, providing spaces where citizens could engage with the full cycle of food production, transformation, distribution, and consumption. Globalization has since weakened this relationship, making contemporary food systems increasingly dependent on distant agricultural regions and industrialized production methods. As a result, consumers have become disconnected from the labour, knowledge, and resources required to sustain this fundamental human need.

Today, public space offers an opportunity to reconnect urban life with these processes by making food systems visible once again and fostering a collective vision for more resilient food futures. To do so, students considered how traditional and ancestral food-processing methods and architectural knowledge might inform new responses to contemporary urban challenges.

Through a network of public infrastructures in Geneva’s Pâquis neighbourhood, students explored new relationships between city dwellers and food. The goal was not to bring all food production back into the city, but rather to create spaces where food-related processes become visible, shared, and integrated into everyday urban life.

These infrastructures act as social condensers, supporting local communities while increasing awareness of food systems and their transformations. Through collective experimentation, the semester’s projects proposed resilient civic spaces that reimagine public space as a productive, sustainable, and edible ecosystem. Together, they offer new models for possible food futures at a hyperlocal scale. 

Students: Vittoria Artaria, Maeva Chavannes, Sarah De Laffitte, Sasha Horak de Kalbermatten, Zoé Leresche, Agnès Nicaise, Damien Bourgeois, Caroline Favre, Camille Frey, Vega Magaldi, Fabien Millieret, Esther Rivas, Martin Annen, Giona Baumann, Hippolyte Giraud, Manon Lebon, Missilia Mendy, Nina Wallimann