Agritopia: Building a Model für Zürich Nord

Abstract

Our first concrete utopia will be an AGRITOPIA. The recurrent focus on agriculture in this studio is not accidental—we believe that the crisis of our imagination is reinforced by the separation of the urban and the rural in our culture, and by continuing to think the future only in terms of urban life disconnected from the land and nature. To imagine a different urban future for Zürich, we will work on agricultural territories that lie at the city’s edges. They are an example of periurban landscapes which form vital support to cities with water sources, clean air, various materials, land for food and energy production. Only by radically reimagining territorial organisation and land use practices in ways that are currently often disqualified as utopian and impossible, can we divert ongoing tendencies of agricultural intensification accompanied by soil degradation, water pollution and biodiversity loss. Designing sustainable biophysical relationships reflects in urban life itself, and will enable us to address issues of consumption, of commodification of land and labour, and even of housing crisis. The place and time for AGRITOPIA are agricultural fields of Zürich Nord beyond 2050, in a world of future generations. A five-minute walk from our studio in Oerlikon toward the north, the city fabric stops and a view opens onto an agricultural landscape connecting the city of Zurich and the communes of Rümlang and Regensdorf, with Katzensee and its adjacent wetlands at its core.