Food Cycles. Redesigning processes and products

This paper illustrates an on-going research project, Creative Food Cycles, that addresses the topic of food as a cross-cutting factor and powerful accelerator towards codesigning sustainability in cities. In this direction, the activities of the two-year-span interdisciplinary project explore new ways, not only of targeting food as an industrial product, but also trying to move the levers of cultural innovation. This culture-based approach to food cycles can provide a deeper understanding of and practical tools to enhance a circular economy in everyday life and become a driver for positive change. The multidisciplinary platform, booted with the project, simultaneously displays a recursive set of thematic actions in three cities, such as workshops, art-installations and itinerant exhibitions, following three phases: from production to distribution on the intersection of digital technologies and scattered food production. Distribution to consumption explores cultural experiences with special focus on new models of distributing, processing and consuming food. Lastly, that from consumption to disposal highlights new ways of recycling food waste as a resource for new materials and prototypes.