Design for Resilience at Home: Integrating Housing and Regenerative Food Systems

Design for resilience at home: Integrating housing and regenerative food systems Wendy Fountain Bachelor of Applied Science (Built Environment), Graduate Diploma in Interior Design, Master of Professional Education and Training, Postgraduate Certificate in Tertiary Teaching School of Architecture and Design Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Tasmania March 2015 ii Statements Declaration of originality This thesis contains no material which has been accepted for a degree or diploma by the University or any other institution, except by way of background information and duly acknowledged in the thesis, and to the best of my knowledge and belief no material previously published or written by another person except where due acknowledgement is made in the text of the thesis, nor does the thesis contain any material that infringes copyright. Authority of access This thesis may be made available for loan and limited copying and communication in accordance with the Copyright Act 1968. Statement of ethical conduct The research associated with this thesis abides by the international and Australian codes on human and animal experimentation, the guidelines by the Australian Government's Office of the Gene Technology Regulator and the rulings of the Safety, Ethics and Institutional Biosafety Committees of the University. Signature: Date: 18/03/2015 iii iv Acknowledgements I have been immensely privileged to undertake this study with the support of many entities and individuals. I thank the University of Tasmania for facilitating the Australian Postgraduate Award that made the study possible, and for the conference funding that allowed me to interact with diverse disciplinary communities and gain international perspectives. I am enormously indebted too to the participants in the study for welcoming me into their homes and for engaging so generously in the process. Sincere thanks to my supervisory team for their scholarly guidance, critique and far-ranging support: Dr Catriona McLeod with whose encouragement the study was seeded, and whose commitment has extended far beyond duty; Dr Nicki Tarulevicz who helped me navigate and explore foreign disciplines, places and academic writing crafts; and Dr Stuart King who, despite the unenviable task of joining us midway, has offered so much invaluable and incisive feedback. The generous mentoring of my research advisor, Professor Jonathan Holmes, has been deeply appreciated and will prompt rueful reflection upon crises averted. Dr Jo-Anne Kelder has been another wonderful mentor to me, with her wisdom resonating between our infrequent, lunchtime catch-ups. Several people have inspired and shaped my food life over the years and without them, I cannot imagine devising such a study. My smallholder grandparents, with whom I spent many a school holiday, gave me delightful memories along with a vision of an alternative way of living and being. My kitchen mentors are too numerous to list but in North Yorkshire, Slow Food heroines Liz Merryweather, Laura Mason and Sarah Tyreman lent much joyful inspiration, and nurtured my work-in-progress. In Sweden, Sonja Ericsson and Marie Göthlund helped conjure some compelling experiences and connections beyond my wildest hopes. My parents have supported me in every possible way, near and far, with their many intangible gifts and steadfast belief in me. My stalwart friend, Dave Abbott, has also supported me in a thousand ways. Team lawn mowing, for example, always achieved far more than orderly grass, and through committed listening and reading, he now understands that the thesis is about rather more than ‘pantries and wardrobes’. v Finally, I dedicate this thesis to the memory of my dear friend, Annie Johnson, who was an exemplary ‘everyday designer’. With her enthusiasm and warm affection I dared to interweave all that I deeply care about, and she endures in these pages. vi Abstract At the core of this design research is the profound question of how to nourish, shelter and foster the well-being of our burgeoning population on earth, in a regenerative and equitable manner. Contemporary housing and food systems in Australia, as in many developed settings, are largely modernist legacies reflecting a bygone era of cheap and plentiful resources, and persistent anthropocentric perspectives disconnecting humans from our ecological dependencies. Viewed from a resilience perspective, dominant housing types and food system institutions are deeply implicated in widening ‘ecological overshoot’ and biospheric disruption, as are associated practices of design. In response, I propose how housing and food systems can be integrated as an urban resilience strategy through a merger of ecological design research and resilience inquiry. The re-visioning of the homescape central to the thesis builds upon recent developments in urban agriculture, emergent ‘productive housing’, alternative food movements, and broader sustainable living strategies. The design research approach, interrelating resilience strategies, practice theories, questions of type and participatory design, was conducted over three overlapping phases. Phase 1 – research into design – involved a social- ecological analysis of dominant food culture and domestic design centred on the kitchen, thereby establishing critical context for Phases 2 and 3. Phase 2 – research for design – comprised my ethnographic participation in 12 Tasmanian food-producing households, representing a range of density and tenure types. In Phase 3 – research through design – householders engaged in participatory design workshops to speculate how the home could better support their food- producing practices. In this final phase, I also undertook design iterations in response to a design meta-brief synthesised from the Phase 2 and 3 participatory methods. The resulting regenerative food axis design patterns address high-density, medium-density, inner urban, suburban and peri-urban housing, and are represented using schematic models and indicative spatial layouts. In these vii design outcomes, the kitchen-garden interface is illuminated as the catalyst of regenerative energy, water and nutrient cycles, in addition to important social functions. I follow with discussion of material and immaterial design considerations, scaling out from the kitchen-garden system to community-based alternative food networks. Home-based food production is further located within a resurgence of homecraft, the know-how and making skills of which I highlight as complementary threads in enhancing urban resilience. In order to activate ecological restoration in our vast suburban tracts, I explore roles for design practice embedded within ‘living labs’ and grassroots networks. The thesis concludes with a strategic framework for integrating housing and regenerative food systems aimed at Australian design practice and design education, and for re-contextualisation in other developed and developing settings. viii Contents Statements iii Acknowledgements v Abstract vii List of figures xiii List of boxes xvii List of tables xvii 1. Introduction 1.0 Overview 1 1.1 Inquiry context and problem framing 3 1.2 Research questions 13 1.3 Research design overview 14 1.4 Foundational concepts for inquiry 17 1.5 Thesis structure 25 1.6 Reader’s guide 27 1.7 Conclusion 28 2. Re-connecting ecosystems, food and housing: Literature review 2.0 Introduction 29 2.1 Food systems and food culture 31 2.2 Interplays of food and space, food and infrastructure 44 2.3 Housing and food system parallels 48 2.4 Guiding lights: Three ecological design precedents 59 2.5 Conclusion 67 3. Approaching design research 3.0 Introduction 69 3.1 Design processes, design products and design in this study 71 3.2 Locating design research 78 3.3 Defining ‘design research for resilience’ 81 3.4 Ways of knowing and ways of representing knowledge 83 3.5 The researcher in the room 91 3.6 Conclusion 95 ix 4. Conducting design research for resilience 4.0 Introduction 99 4.1 Research design overview 100 4.2 Resilience inquiry, practice theories, types and participatory design 102 4.3 Phase 1: Social-ecological analysis of dominant food culture and 106 domestic design 4.4 Phase 2: Multi-household ethnography in food-producing settings 111 4.5 Phase 3: Participatory design workshops and design iterations 115 4.6 Conclusion 120 5. The kitchen: Four social-ecological readings 5.0 Introduction 123 5.1 What’s cooking in your kitchen? 127 5.2 Kitchens, consumption, and the art of lifestyle 134 5.3 Past lives of the kitchen 141 5.4 ‘Greening’ the kitchen: Counterparts and ecological agents 153 5.5 Conclusion 159 6. Inside the everyday: Participatory outcomes 6.0 Introduction 161 6.1 Overview of Phase 2 and 3 methods and participation 162 6.2 Phase 2 multi-household ethnography analysis 165 6.3 Phase 2 summary 181 6.4 Phase 3 design workshops analysis 185 6.5 Phase 3 summary 205 6.6 Conclusion: Design meta-brief for regenerative food axis patterns 208 7. Design for resilience at home: Design iterations 7.0 Introduction 211 7.1 Wider homecraft practices and making space for making 213 7.2 Mapping a regenerative food axis: The ‘living lab’ 217 7.3 Food axis patterns and ecological food practices 223 7.4 ‘Adaptive re-use of the suburbs’, home by home 241 7.5 Conclusion 248 8. Conclusion 8.0 Key outcomes and arguments 251 8.1 A strategic framework for new knowledge transfer 256 8.2 Limitations of the study 260 8.3 Opportunities for future inquiry 261 x References 265 Image

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