Living with Food

Studio Critic: Elizabeth Whittaker
Site: Somerville, MA
Spring 2019

What if apartments can live symbiotically with a fresh food hub – as opposed to shopping from locations and sources that take thousands of miles of transportation – embracing the true “farm to table”?

Nominated for Platform 12 Exhibition / Publication, Harvard GSD
Collaborator: De Qian Huang

By strategically identifying food as both a catalyst and opportunity to re-think the housing typology, our project takes cues from the existing programs from the Market Basket currently on site in hope to create a more synergistic experience between living, growing, harvesting, and dining for the Somerville neighborhood. We began by identifying the inefficiencies in the current food supply and consumption chain, matching them with their corresponding types of living spaces and lifestyles. The design embraces the concept of duality and double-sidedness, creating a unique pair of programs on both the North and South sides of the side. While the north side embraces a more traditional and individualistic lifestyle characterized by single units and traditional grocery store, the south side celebrates a more communal lifestyle, featuring communal programs such as community kitchen, urban farm, as well as the capacity to host food trucks, an inherent part of Somerville’s culinary and alimentary culture.

The twinning is also paralleled materially, where the north side features exposed timber frame while the south side takes on contemporary interpretations of a brick construction typically found in New England. Through the active series of coupling, pairing, twinning, and merging, the project aims to challenge the traditional disconnect – both physical and psychological – between food being harvested and the end-users that are consuming them, in hope to once again captivate people’s interest and connection with the communities they live in as well as the food they consume, because after all, “we are what we eat.”