Towards New Feeding Grounds
Food Systems and Rural Encounters in the Megacity
M.T. Majcherek (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
M.G.H. Schoonderbeek – Mentor (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
S. Milani – Mentor (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
P.H.M. Jennen – Mentor (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
F. Geerts – Mentor (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
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Abstract
Towards New Feeding Grounds investigates the peri-urban countryside of Chongqing as a contested frontier shaped by megacity expansion, infrastructural transformation, and emerging forms of automated production. Situated within territories destabilized by large-scale water, energy, and digital infrastructures, the project responds to landscapes suspended between agricultural memory and urban speculation.
The proposal introduces a hybrid food infrastructure that combines an automated greenhouse core with open, ground-based agricultural fields, markets, and communal spaces. Through this dual system, the project negotiates between efficiency and collectivity, automation and manual labour, positioning food production as a civic and spatial practice rather than a sealed industrial process.
By weaving territorial research, technological systems, and architectural form, the project proposes a new techno-agrarian typology that redefines agriculture as visible, accessible, and infrastructural within the megacity. In doing so, it contributes to broader debates on urbanization, food sovereignty, and the future relationship between city, countryside, and automation.