Cultivating Culture | Cultural Cultivation

Abstract

We are living in the Anthropocene; a period of time shaped by, and for, dominance of the human race. Barely a place or species sharing this earth remains unaffected by our activity. Humans treat other animals as commodities, objects available to be exploited. They are used for our gain and pleasure, at great cost to those individuals involved and indeed to entire species. The North Sea, surrounded by many of the world’s most powerful nations is suffering from catastrophic overfishing. Trillions of fish are killed each year, a scale of extraction so huge it is leaving ecosystems on the brink of collapse. A disconnect in our empathy for other species is further widened by the border between land and sea, the familiar and the unknown, between us and them. Scalloway is a small town in the Shetland Isles, 260 miles North East of Scotland. It sits in a wild, beautiful and romanticised landscape, surely the epitome of nature. Yet the islands are dominated by intense and ever growing salmon farms, highly destructive both to the fish who are farmed and the environment the industry dominates. As demand continues to grow, consumers typically have very little connection to the producers or the impacts felt by production. Scalloway is left in a state of constant adaptation, intensification and increasing dependency. Alternatives to animal-based foods exist and the arguments for their adoption, from nutrient profile to sustainability to animal welfare is compelling, so why haven’t we changed our approach to production? Food, despite playing an essential, daily part of each and every of our lives, appears to be the last aspect we are willing to adapt or change. It is embedded within our social, cultural and emotional connections: a change to our eating can bring so much more. Taking Scalloway as a precedent, a new approach to food production is envisaged, using spatial design as a tool to challenge, inspire and shift patterns in our daily lives. It harnesses the technical capability of architecture, providing the physical infrastructure for a new system of production, yet combines this with the aesthetic qualities it imbues to inspire, attract and reinforce the positivity of new possibilities. Finally, it breaks down barriers and thresholds to provide spatial connections, bringing together producer and consumer and creating habitats not only for humans but for all species to thrive. Understanding the process of change as a series of provocations, reminders and inspirations, cultural (ex)change invites the visitor on a journey. A series of moments mark the gradual transition from the comfort and familiarity of the land, to the sublime, unknown of the sea; defamiliarising, reorienting, sharing and expanding. Food production anchors habitat and livelihoods for other species in a mutually beneficial, productive relationship, bringing together human and non-human needs in places of co-existence. Consumption is reunited with production to create a place of experiential education, of discovery and exploration. A place that reconsiders, how we live and who we live alongside, bringing awareness and responsibility back into the public realm, back to the scale of the individual.