Teaching
ETH Zurich Seminar Week: What is Next?
Food & The City
Studio Adam Caruso, ETH Zurich
19 October 2020
with Carolyn Steel, Yvonne Lötscher, and Laura Schälchli
Not having to think about food is a privilege. In the third talk of the seminar week, Carolyn Steel (author of 'Sitopia: How Food Can Save The World'), Yvonne Lötscher (head of Sustainable Nutrition, Zurich) and Laura Schälchi (Slow Food Switzerland) discuss the relation between food and the city. Where is our food coming from? How does food shape our city? What has to change and how, in order to make our nutrition sustainable? Coming from theoretical, educational and practical backgrounds, the panelists discuss their various approaches in contemporary food-economy.
Carolyn Steel is an architect, historian and author of Hungry City and Sitopia, which observes how food shapes our lives: our bodies, habits, homes, landscapes, cities, politics and economics. 'Sitopia' refers to a world shaped by food, and comes from the Greek sitos- food; topos- place. Carolyn is a director of Kilburn Nightingale Architects in London and a research fellow at Aeres University. She has taught for a number of years at Cambridge University, London Metropolitan University, the London School of Economics and Wageningen University.
Yvonne Lötscher studied biology, microbiology and immunology, and agricultural science at ETH Zurich. She worked for the BWL for four years and in 2018 was made project leader of sustainable food Strategy for the City of Zurich. Yvonne Lötscher focuses on the question of nutrition strategies for the future. Her focus is on collecting data and assessing the influence of infrastructures which deal with the distribution and trade of food. Raising public awareness is at the core of her work, establishing a dialogue with the population of Zurich about food production, diet and its influence on the climate.
Laura Schälchli is co-founder and director of the chocolate company La Flor Schokoladen Manufaktur. The Start-up was founded in Zurich two years ago and is based on three business strategies: production, gastronomy and events. All the founders have experience in the food- and gastronomy sector and aim to produce high- quality chocolate with a transparent production chain.
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