Coolture Kiosk is the space where food becomes a social aggregator and cultural vehicle.
Coolture Kiosk is a civic design project, located in Venice, that uses the kitchen as an element of community activation. A space of inclusion that creates a link between the territory and the people who live it. The aim of the project is to create social aggregation and urban regeneration by using food as a vector of culture and as an object of territorial analysis. Through co-cooking events, workshops and local markets, a relationship is created between citizens, farmers and the territory.
Local
Italy
Veneto;
Venice and Venetian Lagoon
It addresses urban-rural linkages
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
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No
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Coolture Kiosk is a civic, social and regenerative project that is developed in Venice and on the island of Vignole, an island in the Venetian Lagoon geographically close to the city, but at the same time far away, untouched by tourism, inhabited by fifty people. The project aims to connect the city of Venice with the surrounding lagoon territories, enhancing natural territorial features.
Coolture Kiosk is a new idea of a newsstand: a space for spreading the culture of local food, represented by the agricultural products of the lagoon.
The newsstand, a place that has always been a central component of the urban fabric, a place of information and aggregation nowadays is losing centrality. The decay of print media, overtaken by digital magazines, is making these spaces empty or reconverted to selling souvenirs.
Coolture Kiosk reclaims the newsstands present in Venice to set up markets for the sale of local agricultural produce, creating a link between urban and rural areas. The islands and rural territories of the lagoon can become an example of environmental sustainability. Agricultural production is a cornerstone of lagoon areas and the project aims to enhance and raise awareness of this agro-environmental tradition with a new system of distribution, preparation and consumption of local products.
The kiosk is thus converted to the setting up of markets where local farmers sell their products and becomes a communicative tool to publicize the activities organized on Vignole Island, where a system is created that conceptually echoes the kiosk.
This system consists of a shared kitchen space, a vegetable market and a transportable system of tables and seating. All of these components allow users to conduct collective cooking activities and workshops with local experts in order to learn about culinary traditions.
With Culture Kiosk, not only an urban regeneration takes place but also a rural regeneration, which aims to redevelop the islands of the lagoon.
Regeneration
Food culture
Sharing culture
Social aggregation
Connection between urban and rural
The project is sustainable as it involves the recovery of an urban pre-existence: the disused newspaper kiosks.
Furthermore, the new structures involve the use of a sustainable construction material: UPB Boards Made Of Resysta. This material, produced by a regional company, consists of panels made from recycled rice husks and offers the same tactile and aesthetic sensations as real wood. 100% recyclable, it can be cut and worked with the same machines and tools used for wood. To minimize processing waste, modular measures were also used for the various components of the structures.
The sustainability of the project is expressed not only by the materials but also by the service offered: the local vegetable market raises people's awareness of km0 consumption. By creating a network that involves several small farms in the area in a single sales chain, the costs of nautical transport are reduced. Furthermore, the design of flexible elements makes it possible to obtain different layouts of use with the same furnishing components: the tables become containers for the chairs and thanks to the presence of wheels they can be positioned in different ways, the trolley used to transport the vegetable crates becomes also an exhibition medium for the market.
Coolture Kiosk has an urban aesthetic and fidelity to the concept of the newsstand, dictated by the choice of wanting to express its social value.
The main features of the project are:
- Flexibility: the project includes the possibility of transformation of the space. Through the creation of movable structures (tables and displays) are created different configurations adaptable to different activities to be carried out.
- Innovation: the project proposes a new vision and use of the traditional kiosk, which becomes a "food catalyst" to bring together in one system the activities of selling agricultural products, food preparation and consumption.
- Active participation and workshop approach: through the facilitation of different actors (users, farms and cooks) new social networks and a common vision of the sense of belonging to a city and a territory are built. To facilitate dialogue among the actors, the project proposes the sharing of cooking and eating spaces. In addition, through proposed workshop activities held by experienced figures in traditional and local culinary, shared actions are developed for collective learning.
- Culture: transforming unused spaces into living spaces generates culture. Moreover, food is culture when it is produced, when it is prepared, and when it is consumed.
Through the project, a new awareness of the issues of circular economy, sustainability and short supply chain is to be conveyed.
Coolture Kiosk's overall objective is to include different realities of the urban landscape in a new dimension.
Starting from the idea of regenerating the city's kiosks, transforming them into places of shared experience and knowledge, the aim is to create a connection between the urban population (city of Venice) and the rural population (Vignole Island).
The overall objective of the project is achieved through community involvement, inclusion and a sense of belonging.
The project is aimed at all age groups, and is designed to create a bond between all parties involved: citizens, farmers and cooks.
Through the design of spaces for collaborative work, it is possible to facilitate dialogue and exchange between the parties involved in order to develop new social relationships.
Coolture Kiosk involves local food experts who share social and sustainability values to share knowledge and raise awareness through the proposed activities (cooking workshops, conferences, local food tasting...).
The local community, composed of the citizens of Venice and the Vignole, is involved in each phase of the project: consultation, participation in activities, social media sharing.
The part of the project that recovers the kiosks also contributes to the communication and promotion of the project. The kiosks in fact host graphics and posters to make the community aware of all aspects of the project, inviting them to participate in the activities that take place on Vignole Island. In this way, these become central spaces to create a link between the city and the rural island. In addition, these spaces, by hosting the market for agricultural products from the lagoon, facilitate knowledge of the area and promote a more conscious and sustainable model of selling, purchasing and consumption.
Coolture Kiosk is a civic space for the society that inhabits Venice and its islands.
From an initial phase of contact with the people living in the Venice lagoon, the lack of a bond between the territories emerged. Mass tourism and the consequent depopulation of the historic center of Venice lead to a lack of a sense of belonging to the place.
This sense of belonging and contact with the land can be achieved through the rediscovery of the natural value of the landscape.
The chain of agricultural products grown in the lagoon landscape is the means to achieve this connection.
The market, workshops and shared cooking activities aim to establish relationships among people.
Culinary experts, passionate citizens and farmers have here the opportunity to share their knowledge, traditional recipes, ancient ways of processing, but also new experiments.
Carrying out these activities on the island of Vignole is an added value to the project. People come into contact with a natural landscape, which the city center does not present. Being in the midst of nature, in a group, facilitates interpersonal exchanges.
The design of collective spaces, such as the shared kitchen and table and seating system, facilitates learning and collaboration.
In addition, through an app, the opportunity is given to share one's cookbooks so that they can be replicated anytime and anywhere, creating a network of knowledge.
The stakeholders are principally citizens and local farms.
Citizens are involved both in a preliminary design phase and in the activities promoted by the project. Through a direct confrontation with the inhabitants of the island of Vignole and Venice, the main needs of the reality were analyzed, which can be summarized as the need to requalify the island of Vignole and to create a link with the city, to make it a alive place, but not a tourist place.
From this first phase of contact, from an on-site inspection and from an accurate analysis of the area, it was perceived that the "vocation" of this island is the predominance and richness of the agricultural dimension.
By contacting the farm on the island of Vignole, which specializes in artichoke cultivation, it became clear that there are many difficulties related to the sale of the harvest, given the high transportation costs and competition from artichokes from other Italian regions. For this reason, the creation of a network that connects the different farms allows for lower distribution costs and increased sales opportunities and visibility to these producers.
The pre-design phase, consisting of research and confrontation with reality, involved experts from the disciplines of civic and social design, urban planning, experts from the local culinary sector with an eye to social practices and farms.
This multidisciplinary dialogue has provided the basis for understanding the urban and social fabric that characterizes the territory of the Venetian lagoon, a fragile territory with authentic and unique characteristics.
The sharing of different knowledge and experiences had the aim of providing knowledge of all aspects of the context in which the project is inserted. The ability to understand and interpret the spatial, social and environmental phenomena that characterize urbanization and urban regeneration practices, both locally and globally, has allowed the development of a design concept that can be adapted to different realities.
The project embodies several innovative ideas given by the aim of connecting the urban with the rural, giving it a new life, by the use of sustainable materials,and by the creation of a service for the distribution of local agricultural products.
Coolture Kiosk starts from real needs of giving a new life to an urban and a rural context by offering innovative solutions.
Regarding the first aspect, the project is innovative because it reuses spaces already present in the city, newsstands, turning them into information points, where weekly markets of local products are organized, for the sensitization of citizens on the issue of sustainable economy.
From the rural point of view, on the other hand, innovation is central to the design of a system to regenerate the island of Vignole. The system consisting of the market structures, shared kitchen and tables and chairs is designed with an innovative material derived from rice husk waste.
The project also by acting in parallel in two realities, urban and rural, goes to create a link between the island and the city of Venice. It also creates a link between the different farms in the lagoon. It thus deals with uniting farmers with citizens through the distribution of products in the historic Venetian center and the organization of collective activities.
Coolture Kiosk has a strong replicability character. Urban regeneration is a need present in many contexts and places, so the system proposes elements that can be easily adapted to any reality.
The structure set regenerates spaces for the dissemination of local tradition and collaboration among citizens.
It can be recreated anywhere in Europe, with the involvement of a heterogeneous community (farmers, cooks, citizens), strong collaborative work and dedicated funding.
Designing a system that does not disrupt the character of a place, whether it is an historic center, a suburban setting, an urban or rural context, makes the project flexible and successful to different contexts.
The recovery of kiosks, places that in the past, with the sale of newspapers, were central to public information, makes it possible to restore cultural and social value to these spaces, symbols of a community and a territory.
Reproducibility in other places becomes central and functional to revitalizing rural and urban areas in many countries, thanks to a combination of innovation and tradition present in both the design and the activities offered.
The expansion of Coolture Kiosk in different countries will result in:
- increased awareness of the value of the land;
- dissemination of a sustainable vision of the production, sale and consumption of agri-food products;
- urban and rural regeneration;
- rehabilitation of disused structures (newsstands).
The project addresses the global challenge of urban and social regeneration and the sustainable approach to consuming local products.
The idea of urban regeneration includes the need to reuse existing urban spaces without consuming more land. This is achieved by using newsstands for the organization of neighborhood markets. The proposed activities and the new model of product distribution, based on the creation of a network to unite different businesses, promote a green attitude to consumption.
Coolture Kiosk becomes a bottom-up intervention format easily replicable in other urban centers. The recovery of sociality and the link between urban and rural areas proposed by the project, can thus be solved locally leading to global benefits.
