Composting Worlds
Tallinn Architecture Biennale 2022: Edible
Curators: Lydia Kallipoliti & Areti Markopoulou

The Plantionocene is a paradox of plenty. The bountiful abundance of industrial agriculture has both destroyed landscapes and ecologies and decreased access to sufficient, affordable and nutritious food. In the United States, more than 40 million people struggle to feed themselves, unevenly impacting population along class, gender, race, and ethnic lines. East Boston is one such microcosm of food insecurity and environmental injustice. A food desert and a historical immigration entry point, the neighborhood is a compost of infrastructural projects—landfills, highways, tunnels, and the airport—with compounded environmental and climatic externalities. The project “Composting Worlds” emerges from and composes with such urgent trouble to cultivate hospitable refugia among inherited ruins.

“Filling Lands” diverts systemic organic waste generated by restaurants, food manufacturers and distributors away from disposal and into compost for community gardens sites, framed by gabion walls and situated in the critical flooding zones of the East Boston waterfront.

“Mouth of the River” monitors the environmental burdens of the Mystic River marsh and salt-water species in seven sites that sample the chemical contaminants, study the bioindicators, and grow salt eating plants and species.

“Grounding Logan” restrains air traffic at the city’s International Airport to limit pollution of air and soil and to reclaim one runway into a forest for the residents of East Boston, including birds and bees.

“Ghost Kitchens” transforms left-over odd city plots into pop-up community kitchens to expand options for both food access and collective life.

"LifeStock” hacks the developer-driven building stock of East Boston through a series of trojan-like whimsical farm animals on the site of former racetrack at Suffolk Downs.

Project Team:
Rania Ghosn and El Hadi Jazairy, Melissa Gutierrez Soto, Eakapob Huangthanapan, Monica Hutton, Emma Jurczynski, Anhong Li.

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