Tasting Territory

The world’s current food and farming system is producing increasingly industrial chemical-intensive farming, resulting in monoculture farming becoming the major operation of food production. Urban food habits are becoming unsustainable, unhealthy, and exploitative. The homogenisation of the global diet has made land lose its cultural identity and urban society has systematically marginalized our awareness of the methods of food production, food nutritional value and its environmental impact.

Tasting territory is a flexible food system that reimagines the food production, distribution and consumption of Melbourne, Australia to deal with the issues engaged with the society, environment, and human health. Rather than viewing food purely as sustenance, Tasting Territory proposes a collection of core drivers for the city that facilitate the local economy, promote cultural identity, protect the environment and secure the population’s long-term health. The project progresses through three stages – farm palace, food incubators and food stations – each designed to alter consumers’ perception of food.

Food produced in Tasting Territory proposes a diverse and resilient natural ecological farming system, while simultaneously exploring the Australian Aboriginal food culture to promote local native food diversity and to conserve the environment. It reorganizes the patterns of food production, distribution, and consumption to promote a local sense of community, society, land, and the environment for human health and civic responsibility.