PUPA
The rapid growth of global populations, from 7.6 to 9.8 billion in thirty years, calls for emergent attentions of global food shortage and challenges our current paradigm of cultivating food sources. Our current food system relies greatly on the global livestock industry, which consumes 70% of the global agricultural lands and pollutes substantial wastes hazardous to the environment. Among many solutions being speculated to combat the challenge, a new food source seems to promise an optimistic future to the billions of hungry mouths. Insects.
Thailand is one of the countries with a long history and culture of eating insects and is listed as one of the countries with the most recorded species of edible insects. With Bangkok being the capital of bustling urban and food culture, the project proposes to tackle the global issue of food production through architectural intervention within the site in Bangkok.
The project proposes a site of an existing abandoned 185m tall building located in a prime location where city CBD, old districts and Bangkok’s central pier is interconnected. This architectural intervention is programmed as modular insect farm/factory that could be stacked and scaled into a skyscraper. Inspired by the natural metamorphosis process of an insect, the project acts like an architectural parasite attaching to an existing structure of a derelict building. Like a cocoon enveloping a larva, this architectural metamorphosis could reactivate an abandoned and decayed building back to life. The farmed insects would as well foster and sustain an augmented ecosystem within a building.
The project does not only promise a solution to the global food issue through architectural intervention. This intervention also innovatively transforms an urban derelict into an urban oasis, activating urban prime spot, creating public realms and feeding back the city food from its own waste.
Supakrit Wongviboonsin, Panitnan Patanayindee, Eakapob Huangthanapan
Thailand