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Photo: DAE

Design Project SDG 2: Zero Hunger

In the run up to the UN Food Systems Summit in September 2021, Netherlands Food Partnership and the Design Academy Eindhoven (DAE), supported by MANN studio and NethWork will be exploring how design can offer new perspectives on the elimination of hunger, specifically looking at middle and lower income economies.

Addressing Food Systems Challenges from the viewpoint of design

From April onwards a group of 110 Master students of the Design Academy Eindhoven will research, reflect, question, and speculate on the objectives of SDG 2: Zero Hunger. The international group of students is composed of more than 40 nationalities and a wide variety of cultural backgrounds familiar with diverse local realities on different continents. They also represent different positions within the school's design practices, guaranteeing a more transdisciplinary approach. The projects will investigate themes related to economic diversity, hunger definitions and scales, communication on hunger, while also offering outlooks on new agricultural futures, looking at the role of the body, its metabolisms and nutritional value.

Provided with a substantive briefing and exchange, students are challenged to the dilemma’s and developments of the SDG2, expose them in an original and critical way offering new perspectives: from the economic system of agricultural subsidies and complex production chains, to issues related to scale, possible social or landscape consequences of growth, the possibilities and impossibilities of technology, making new overviews of food products or handbooks, increasing consumer awareness on food, waste or obesity and potentially sketching future products and scenarios.

Kick-off with Rem Koolhaas

The project kicked off with an inspirational speech by Rem Koolhaas about his research into the countryside and his ? Essay. Koolhaas sketched different realities and new contours of the countryside around the world and emphasised that it’s crucial to put an effort in understanding other contexts and finding out what is happening elsewhere in order to reinforce or accelerate what has potential.

As an echo to the Countryside: The Future exhibition by Rem Koolhaas / AMO which was on show at the S.R. Guggenheim Museum in NY in 2020, a selection of the design projects will be further developed into (online) interventions for the UN Food System Summit.

6 Design Studios

The students will work in 6 different design studios, looking into distinct assignments covering different aspects of the food system including nutrition, the body, the role of technology, science fiction and media, amongst others.

The outcomes of the initial research process were presented to the Netherlands Food Partnership team and invited guests from Nethwork and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at a Kitchen Table Review. The projects will be developed further in the context of the design studio themes and will be presented during the final presentation in June. Following the semester, a selection of the work of the students will be post-produced and shown in the context of the World Food Systems Summit called by the United Nations for the fall of 2021 and potentially at the Dubai World's fair which is expected to be opened around the same time.

This project is a collaboration between the Netherlands Food Partnership (NFP), Design Academy Eindhoven (DAE), MANN and NethWork. This process has artistic research at its core and a (modest) presentation project during the UN World Food Systems Summit in the fall of 2021 as its primarily desired outcome.