Post Soil Generation

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"Return agriculture to culture, find fun in farming and subtract the dirt. This hygienic premium greenhouse regulates the climatic conditions, enhances efficiency and speeds up growth. Customers turn “you pick“ into “you play“ with a joystick in their hand."

 

In urban, indoor, or vertical farming, food is grown close to the consumer. The traditional cultivation of food involves tools, noise, dirt and chaos. Hiding „real" farming procedures from consumers remained necessary in order to retain a “clean” image of farming and crops. What could and should be remembered was the mere finished product, served on the silver tray of commodity aesthetics.

 

Retail designers have been able to establish the event-based approach to retail in all areas of retail trade, and the food sector is not an exception. Every self-respecting supermarket now owns large, black, Plexiglas covered boxes in its vegetable department – the greenhouses of the future. In fact, it is a digitally networked herb farm in which plants are to grow under optimal conditions. The plants are not planted in soil but are instead dipped into a thin layer of liquid that provides the necessary nutrients. Bright LED lamps provide continuous lighting from above. Everything can be individually adjusted so that the optimal climatic conditions can be imitated for each plant. Vertical farming promises efficient and above all fast growth. What progress: the domestication of agriculture.

 

 

 

 

Claw Machine, Kohlrabi

2020

Installation view at Euroshop 2020, Düsseldorf

Photos: Sophie Matysek