For years, urban food markets have been receiving resources, selling food, and importing waste, all while visitors come and go, consuming without a second thought. It's a convenient yet anthropocentric way of consumption, neglecting the facts of transportation emissions and untransparent food waste management.
But what if we could have a decentralized food system and let no food waste travel outside the market?
Food Market Tomorrow does it by integrating people's engagement.
I design fun and inclusive platforms that empower citizens to take an active role in driving sustainable changes. My design process involves extensive scenario research, technology analysis, model-making, user testing, and iterations based on feedback.
I dedicate myself to developing platforms that enable citizens to collaborate and contribute towards building a more sustainable future. I believe that people would be happy to participate in sustainable transformations once the pathways are well designed.
The circular system in Food Market Tomorrow includes a scaled-down biogas plant, a hydroponic greenhouse, segregation bins and biogas dining sheds. It upcycles food waste into biogas for market energy and on-site ingredient growing. The design includes visitors, locals and sellers to play a small part in keeping the system running and rewards them for their contribution.
In Food Market Tomorrow, visitors, locals and sellers are empowered with a sense of engagement, and can have instant interactions with the outcome of their sustainable practices.
It is an engaging space to hang out, a market using less energy and a starting point to spread sustainable ideologies in urban area.
The market system was designed together with this model to explore the touchpoints mapping, and the interactions of stakeholders.
To motivate visitors to segregate waste and participate in the circular system,
I created an intimate interaction between visitors and the impacts of their recycling behaviours. The dining shed shows the main two things processed from the waste in their hands: a pumped biogas ring and herbs grown from bio-fertilizer.
I build a large scale model to iterate the concept of the dining shed.
Because it's powered by biogas, the shed needs to be made of temperature insulation materials to save energy. Meanwhile, I've observed that visitors like to take pictures of novel or natural spots in the food market. Therefore, I designed the shed as a strawbale building, which saves energy, cost and is attractive to attract people's attention and spread the sustainable idea.
In previous units, I've experienced with anaerobic digestion, which is a process to turn organic waste into biogas. After conversations with a biogas expert, I realized the technology is very mature and it's important to educate people about this accessible energy generation and let people participate. After workshops in neighbourhood communities, I realized that food markets are the suitable scenario for the education experience to happen.
Therefore I started the research in diverse food market and observe people's behaviours in markets. The purpose is to make sure my design suits in the physical and psychological context.
