Wendell Berry, ‘The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture’, 1977.
In this strand, Site, Situation and Controversy, we explored through a series of collective experiences, conversations and visits, the material manifestations of social and political issues at specific sites within the Gothenburg land reserve connected to agriculture and cultivation. In our studies we reconnected to discussions in earlier courses about designed living environments and questions of how lived environments had been shaped by food production and consumption. It examined how rural and peri-urban landscapes, composed of agriculture and its associated infrastructures, formed part of our everyday environments, and how design might help cultivate a closer relationship with the processes, livelihoods, resources, and ecologies tied to food production.
In the early 20th century, new efforts were made in the US and Europe to adopt more efficient and modernised farming practices. One example was the 4-H youth organisation, initiated by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to prepare future generations for large-scale farming through school programmes and youth engagement. Although its origins remained less widely known, the movement had a significant impact. In Sweden, SLU and other influential institutions have long advocated for maintaining large-scale, conventional agriculture. Yet, in light of fossil-fuel limitations and increasing precarity in global food supply chains, particularly regarding rights and justice, alternatives to conventional modern farming appear increasingly rational, and Landless Workers’ movements and campaigns for food sovereignty and peasant rights are spreading globally. In 1977, the US writer, environmental activist, and farmer Wendell Berry described the emerging modern agricultural paradigm as lacking a spiritual relationship to the natural world, ideas frequently dismissed in mainstream politics as romantic or anti-technological. However, these critiques are becoming increasingly resonant in the light of the escalating ecological polycrisis. In 1982, Agnes Denes transformed a derelict yet already expensive plot on Lower Manhattan into a waist-high wheatfield, drawing attention to misplaced societal priorities and deteriorating values, and raising questions about land value and labour aligned with Berry’s critique. A more recent local example is the work of artist and researcher Åsa Sonjasdotter, who spent decades studying farming practices and their industrial roots in Svalöv, Sweden. Food production and consumption had long been associated with design practice, yet often reduced to packaging, marketing, and retail. Broader metaphysical issues of value, lived environments, and quality of life that are highly relevant from a design perspective are rarely addressed as such. In this strand which ran during autumn 2024, we experimented with how design might adopt new roles and commitments in these fundamental dimensions of human life.
The module began with the contexts and implications surrounding Lilla Änggården, a former farm and historical site in Gothenburg, approached through the research project Hidden Sites, a collaboration between the Centre for Critical Heritage Studies, the Gothenburg City Museum, and the UCL Urban Living Lab. Historically, from the 1600s onwards, the larger property known as Änggården belonged to the city, likely donated earlier by the state. A keeper lived on the land rent-free in exchange for unpaid labour maintaining the fields and hunting grounds, and the yield supplied the city with food. The holding formed part of a broader landscape of farmland and forest surrounding Gothenburg. After extensive privatisation, the city repurchased land and farms, some through expropriation, in preparation for urban expansion culminating in the 1960s. Soon after, regional industries collapsed, slowing urban growth, and much of the newly acquired reserve remained undeveloped. Today, approximately 3,000 hectares of agricultural land lie within this reserve, awaiting development. Recently, renewed municipal initiatives connected to food production have been established at Lilla Änggården through various learning programmes, as a result of broader discussions about the value and benefits of local farming. Contemporary social, economic, and ecological pressures increased the need to reconsider how the property was governed and used. Management had been delegated to the Gothenburg City Museum, which, as a public institution, held potential not only to present the site’s historical timeline but also to articulate current concerns, not least through the utilisation of design practice.
The site is one among many in and around Gothenburg that raise questions about how food is cultivated in the region and how these practices shape lived environments. As we examined case studies of farming near Gothenburg, we contextualised our observations by looking at examples elsewhere, both local and global, where questions of food production and living environments had been addressed through design and artistic practice. Examples where design and artistic practice served not only as tools in processes for change but also as methods of narration and dialogue, particularly regarding rights, access, and land-use perspectives. Throughout the strand, we met people working within the municipality as well as organisers from grassroots farming initiatives, continuing discussions from previous courses. Extracts from EF Schumacher, David Harvey, and Tim Ingold, among others, were used to establish the theoretical framework for the studies.