Jesse LeCavalier is a professor, author, theorist and design practitioner situated at the nexus of architecture, urbanism, and infrastructural logistics. He is currently an associate professor in the Department of Architecture at Cornell University and authoredThe Rule of Logistics: Walmart and the Architecture of Fulfillment (University of Minnesota Press, 2016). His recent work with the Canadian Center for Architecture and the University of Toronto explored food infrastructure and access in the city. We sat down with him in December 2021 to talk about this project and new models for food infrastructure in our cities.

T & UWe’re interested in your work as it deals with big picture infrastructure and supply chains at regional, national, and even global scales. What shifted your focus from logistics more broadly to food more specifically? Why food now?

J L CI started looking more closely at the spaces of food logistics during COVID because I was fascinated by the seemingly sudden frequency of “the supply chain” as a phrase in popular media. This happened around the same time that images of empty grocery store shelves started appearing. This lack of inventory was the result of a “demand shock” where people were purchasing in ways that they hadn’t been before, often motivated by anxiety about future access to food. That of course had a significant impact on food systems.

For all the popularity of resiliency as a notion, the food supply chain is not a resilient system.

With a group of students at the University of Toronto, where I was working at the time, I started collecting examples of how and where the supply chain was getting disrupted by COVID, but also at how and where people were finding inventive workarounds or making alterations to the food distribution system.

One of the things that seemed interesting, to go back to your point about looking at the bigger picture, was that it was indeed that ‘bigger picture' that was this issue. So many of these distribution disruptions were the result of structural problems in the way the supply chain is conceptualized as a whole, which is built around the ideas of immediacy and the infrastructure of just-in-time management. The expectation that we can get things so quickly makes for really brittle connections. Because as soon as you can’t get things quickly, for whatever extrinsic reason, then suddenly the whole thing fails. For all the popularity of resiliency as a notion, the supply chain in general—and the food supply chain especially so—is not a resilient system, at least in my encounters with the failures during COVID. During our research, we kept finding that it was the banal operational incompatibilities and misalignments that could shut everything down.

T & UCould you give us a quick overview of the project that developed out of this research that you recently completed for an exhibition at the Canadian Center for Architecture?

J L CThis project was done through my office LeCavalier R+D with Jake Rosenwald and Willis Kingery. It is imagined as a response to a Request for Proposals by a fictional urban entity we called the Brooklyn Amenity Utility. We imagined this as a municipal agency that would oversee the distribution of food throughout the city. The premise came out of our own questioning of why basic levels of food access aren’t thought of as a condition of living in society – in the way that potable water or access to sewers are. The corporate consolidation of food production has privileged economies of scale at the expense of quality and community. Moreover, zoning laws privilege mono-functionality and separation, creating greater distances between food producers and the communities that benefit from them.

The corporate consolidation of food production has privileged economies of scale at the expense of quality and community.

The idea is that this agency, the Brooklyn Amenity Utility, would sponsor infrastructural food nodes which would be only partially designed and then conceptualized and completed in collaboration with local communities and based on their needs and input. The project envisions the ways that the economy of scale of infrastructural development might be a way to incorporate more locally inflected uses. In other words, we are proposing that a certain percentage of the overall cost of building a small food distribution site would be directed to community uses related to that infrastructure. Through this project, we’ve tried to think through how a decentralized set of elements would fit within a network, while taking the processes themselves seriously. For example, we really wanted to figure out what it might look like to mill grain on a corner of a block in Brooklyn in the 21st century, knowing that of course, historically, food production happened at these local levels. At the same time, we also wanted to avoid a nostalgic position by speculating about new ways that the public might access the products of this infrastructure. The flour at the other end of the grain mill, for example.

The parts for the project that aren’t totally resolved are around certain kinds of scalar issues. For example, how much flour does someone actually need each week? You don’t necessarily need a wheelbarrow full. That’s why we think of these localized infrastructures as being connected to other forms of production, like restaurants or community kitchens. Distribution could happen not through a single channel but at micro or macro scales or in other more improvisational forms.

T & UIn your proposal, the more familiar urban architecture of cultural venues and things like bakeries share immediate space with the industrial forms of food processing and distribution. This type of juxtaposition is unusual in cities today. What value is there in bringing a civic or cultural identity to food infrastructure in this way?

J L COne of the things we were interested in thinking through with this project was what a simple shift from a centralized, peripheral form of food distribution to a decentralized and localized form would result. How could this become normalized in the city, in the way that you historically might have had “the well” or “the mill” and things like that? This isn’t out of a search for a nostalgic, medieval past. Rather, it’s a means to reintroduce the infrastructure we have excised at a loss. We were interested in how this reappearance could start to engender new urban relationships and forms of living.

One of the interests, for me, is how the infrastructural language could become civic and not the mystified “black-box” that it often is.

It’s connected, to some extent, to the historic forms of food exclusion, particularly in New York. How could a decentralized infrastructure undermine or work against some of these tendencies to consolidate and offshore and outsource? One of the interests, for me, is how the infrastructural language could become civic and not the mystified “black-box” that it often is; i.e., not something that’s buried and thought of in the same category as roads and bridges.

T & UDo you think that the systems-scale issues that COVID revealed in our national and international food systems will increase the emergence of more localized or grassroots modes of food supply? How important is top-down planning and regulation, or the creation of new government agencies (like the one you propose) to significant change in our food-systems?

J L CI’ve been interested in trying to think it through from a middle-out scale. I think top-down in the United States is basically impossible. We seem to be in a crisis of belief in the state but that has also been a fundamental national characteristic, to speak generally. We have a lot of work to do to recover some idea of the benefits of a regulatory imagination. At the same time, bottom-up approaches often tend to privilege the market or reinforce vulnerability. It’s really the lack of regulation that reinforces precarity or allows people who are savvy operators to find their way through it.

Food has this amazing way of uniting ecology, infrastructure and urbanism because it connects to all of those things.

I do think that there is value in local, self-generated initiatives but I think they need infrastructural and institutional support. Even though we should all live our lives in a way that we feel is ethically-correct, that alone doesn’t do the work it needs to do. I think it could be some sort of combination of things but that it would be valuable if we could find another language than “public-private partnership.” Food has this amazing way of uniting ecology, infrastructure and urbanism because it connects to all of those things. The CCA project also had an architectural component to it, which is to think about how you could develop a family of infrastructural forms and how those could become sponsors for unanticipated variety.

T & UBy its very nature, American bureaucracy is incredibly convoluted. In the article you wrote for CCA’s website on this project, you mentioned that there are these frictions and antagonisms between state and federal regulations and policies that result in even greater convolution. How can suppliers, operators, and ultimately institutions work toward better practices in such an unstable and ambiguous system?

J L CI think there are probably ways that infrastructural realignment could make what they do more effective and allow them to do what they do better around distribution points, for example. Some of these issues are operational but some might be curtailed by regulatory dimensions as well. It does seem that our challenge is to streamline the processes but in a way that is a beneficial helpful kind of streamlining. Otherwise, it can lead to lack of oversight. The role of oversight in an increasingly complicated world is something we have to deal with.

I was living in Maine for the past year and encountered the company Maine Grains that’s been pioneering local milling there. Part of their story comes out of a realization that there are expanded opportunities to work with a broader and more nuanced diversity of grains if your milling operation is much smaller than the typical, massive scale. Theirs is a fascinating story around the possibilities of small-scale work. The impenetrable bureaucratic tangle of trying to do anything new or interesting when it doesn’t conform is such a huge part of the inventiveness. Interestingly, it seems to me that one of the big questions around all of this is where design fits in. Part of our on-the-ground training as architects is navigating all these bureaucratic channels to do something that’s not standardized. There might be a lesson there that’s not so much about how to design a better space, but how to navigate bureaucracy better to find some way to do something.

Neysa Yoon-Cho is VP of Development and External Affairs of Edible Schoolyard NYC. For nearly twenty years, Neysa has worked in the New York non-profit community. She has led development efforts, in both staff and consulting capacities, at a variety of youth development, education, and social service organizations whose missions serve to expand access, equity, and opportunities for children. Neysa is a graduate of Amherst College and lives in Brooklyn, NY with her husband and two children.

T & UHow did Edible Schoolyard NYC get started as an organization and how would you describe your role in relation to the broader New York public school system?

N Y-CEdible Schoolyard NYC is a nonprofit organization that partners directly with New York City public schools to provide hands-on edible education (cooking and garden instruction), classes, extracurricular and family activities, and community engagement programming year-round. Our mission is to support edible education for every child in New York City. 

Established in 2010, our model was inspired by the Edible Schoolyard Project in Berkeley, California. We have adapted the program model and vision to fit the unique needs of New York City public schools and students.

We seek to support the New York City public school system in the following ways as a community-based partner:

• We partner with public schools to provide direct service food education, school garden infrastructure and support, and enrichment programming to students, families, and communities. Currently, we provide direct service programming to nearly 3,500 students in 10 schools in Pre-Kindergarten to 8th grade and their families in communities disproportionately affected by food, health, and education system inequities.

• We provide free or low-cost professional development and technical assistance to other educators and schools across the city, who in turn bring edible education opportunities to their students and communities.

• We collaborate with other food and education organizations, coalitions, as well as district and community leaders to advocate for food education, school gardens, and plant-forward food access for every child.

T & UWhy does food matter in education? What issues are you tackling through your programming and how have students, parents, faculty, and neighborhoods responded?

N Y-CWe believe that all New York City students deserve access to an edible education that connects students to food, their communities and inspires them to create change in the world around them. Edible education for students helps move us all towards a more just and sustainable food system.

• “So many problems are tied together, and they could all be solved by having a school garden.” - Fifth grade student, P.S. 216 Arturo Toscanini School, Brooklyn, NY

Students and school communities are at the center of our edible education approach, which leads to meaningful and lasting change by promoting health and wellness, social and emotional learning and student leadership development, academic enrichment, family and community engagement, and food and environmental justice. We also seek to ground our work in equity and add critical resources--fresh food, healing garden spaces and welcoming kitchen classrooms, staffing--directly to underfunded schools in historically disinvested communities in one of the most segregated school systems in the country.

When our students grow and cook their own foods, they express an increased willingness to taste them, enjoy them more, and feel more confident about their ability.

We seek to be school community-centric and culturally responsive in our approach. Where possible, we host open garden hours for families and invite community members to use and volunteer in the garden. We decide what to plant by asking our staff, students, and school community: Do we want our students to taste or cook with this plant? Would students be interested to see this plant growing? Is the school community excited to grow and eat this plant?

Our programming seeks to support students, schools, and families to:

• Gain increased access to plant-forward foods

• Try more plant-forward, local, nutritious foods

• Grow socially and emotionally

• Become committed to food and environmental justice

• Connect our lessons to core academics

• Prioritize healthy school environments through wellness policies and activities at school

We have found that when our students grow and cook their own plant-forward foods, they express an increased willingness to taste them, tend to enjoy them more, and feel more confident about their cooking ability. Over the past 10 years, 97% of students try the food they made or harvested in our lessons. Additionally, in 2019, we found that 78% of our students reported increased vegetable preference from third to fifth grade. Schools have also reported that Edible Schoolyard NYC programming supports school community engagement, noting that our events are among the best attended by parents and school community members.

• “The conversation around healthy lifestyle goes beyond the [ESYNYC] Green Room and into other classes and the cafeteria. Students will often compare what is prepared in the Green Room with what they are eating for breakfast and lunch and how they can improve their own eating habits.” - Middle School Teacher, Evergreen School for Urban Exploration, Brooklyn, NY

• “It’s an excellent program and [my child] loves it. He actually comes home and says, well, Mom, this is what we did today. Can we make this?” - Parent, Evergreen School for Urban Exploration, Brooklyn, NY

T & UYour “Demonstration Schools” at P.S. 216 in Brooklyn and P.S./M.S. 7 in Manhattan are rare examples of purpose-built food-education focused buildings in the U.S. How have the design of these spaces informed your programming and vice versa?

Our demonstration schools are are hubs of innovation and learning.

N Y-CWe are so proud of our Demonstration Schools P.S. 216 in Brooklyn and P.S./M.S 7 in East Harlem, which are intended to inspire what is possible when school communities, city and community leaders, and community-based organizations come together to support edible education. These sites are hubs of innovation and learning - we have tested new curriculum and offerings, hosted professional development workshops for other educators, and welcomed community members, leaders, and policymakers who are interested in learning more about food education and school gardens.

The design of our two Edible Schoolyard NYC Demonstration Sites has informed our programming in ways both expected and surprising.

• Separate kitchen classrooms and larger garden spaces that can comfortably accommodate a whole class of students makes it possible to reach more students per day and allows for a range of active exploration lessons.

• Having a kitchen classroom that is accessible to students during the school day offers them a safe, supportive space, particularly significant for hungry kids and those who need additional adult presence and support. Students know they can always stop by for clean drinking water and healthy snacks, or a caring educator to talk to.

• Flexible-use spaces with movable furniture have allowed us to adapt to pandemic requirements, as well as evolving school needs.

• Unstructured student access to the gardens at recess and dismissal increases engagement and develops their ownership and stewardship of their school’s green spaces. We’ve seen students visiting their favorite plants day after day, getting to know the hens, or showing new discoveries to their friends and caretakers.

• Providing inviting, sheltered outdoor seating and tables attracts community use and builds engagement after school hours, notably Friday family picnics at PS 216 in Brooklyn and faculty gatherings at PS/MS 7 in East Harlem.

Programming has shaped our spaces in many ways:

• The gardens are shaped for students: we grow vegetables in raised beds, and produce what we call “grazing crops” so that students can pick and taste a wide range of fresh vegetables and fruits. Paths are wide and gathering spaces are generous.

• At PS 216, our students come up with garden infrastructure projects and vote on the one they want to do each year. In the past, they’ve designed, fundraised for, and built a tasting tunnel (a 20-foot-long arbor for edible vines) and a play area that includes a sand table, a picnic table, and space for games.

• At PS/MS 7, we installed an outdoor kitchen that we use for events and cooking classes to encourage more outdoor learning during Covid-19.

• Our rooftop garden at PS 7 sits just outside the kitchen classroom door and is built on top of the cafeteria, allowing cooking classes to quickly harvest herbs and greens for the day’s recipes.

T & UWhat would the dream Edible Schoolyard look like if there were no limitations?

N Y-CA dream Edible Schoolyard includes an outdoor food-producing garden with sheltered gathering and learning spaces, a large greenhouse, and a welcoming kitchen classroom, adjacent to each other, each with the capacity to hold a full class of students. Programming would be integrated into the school day and amplified by activities during lunch, after-school, and over the summer. Families and community members would also have access to the space, through open garden hours, events like family cooking night, farm stands, and food distributions.

If there were truly no limitations? Every classroom in the school opens onto the garden! Outdoor kitchens! And a walk-in fridge and other appliance upgrades for the kitchen classroom.

And ultimately, we hope that every school in New York City would have a school garden and robust food education programming for students and families.

Finally, it’s important to note that while the design of our spaces informs our programming and vice-versa, the key factor in our success is the human one. Dedicated Edible Schoolyard NYC staff, supportive school administrations, committed classroom teachers and engaged students and families are what makes our infrastructure effectively serve our mission.

T & UWhat challenges have you faced that feel specific to New York City? How might your approach differ in other contexts—whether more sprawling like Los Angeles or Detroit or somewhere more rural? What advice do you have to schools across the country that might be interested in starting a program like this?

N Y-CAs with most places in New York city, school space is always limited. We have been creative in designing many of our garden spaces, using corners of the playground, a strip of yard in front of the school, or even hanging the garden on fences around the schoolyard.

If there were truly no limitations? Every classroom in the school opens onto the garden! Outdoor kitchens!

Our advice to schools would be to consult your school community first - the students, families, administrators and other key community stakeholders. They know what will and won’t work for them and what they really want, which is important as they will be helping to maintain the garden! Together, develop a plan and clear goals for what you are seeking to accomplish, and determine who from the community and district should be involved. Take advantage of instructional workshops, and other resources that have already been developed, including those developed by Edible Schoolyard NYC and The Edible Schoolyard Project.

Be creative! Gardens can look very different from place to place and we believe every space has potential to become a garden and valuable food education and outdoor learning space.

T & UWhat do you envision to be the legacy of this approach to education? How does this work intersect with the larger context of our regional, national, and global food system? What are the impacts?

N Y-CWe know first-hand that edible education programming connects students to food, each other and their broader community, and inspires them to create change in the world around them. In fact, garden education has been shown to improve academic performance, especially in science and math; increase feelings of safety, peacefulness, joy and healing from trauma; and improve healthy eating attitudes and behaviors. Further, school gardens support more equitable and culturally responsive education---they are welcoming spaces for all types of learners, including English Language Learners; they encourage cultural, intergenerational, and community connections; and they are restorative green spaces for families who may not have easy access to yards and parks.

School gardens also provide tremendous community and environmental benefits such as distribution of locally-grown, produce and composting. These spaces enable children to observe and understand where their food comes by making them part of a truly local food system. These school gardens support students in developing lasting food preferences for fruits and vegetables. Studies have found that garden-based nutrition education programs are more effective than classroom-based ones.

School gardens impact the whole child: educationally, socially, emotionally, physically, and culturally.

Ultimately, we hope that all students in New York City will have access to edible education and become future leaders shaping our local, national, and global food system. We have seen so many of the benefits listed above firsthand in our programs and know that school gardens impact the whole child: educationally, socially, emotionally, physically, and culturally. We hope that our programs expose those benefits to our students, families, and school communities as well, building a group of advocates for edible education across NYC and beyond.

Caetie Ofiesh is the Director of Design and Consulting at Just Fare. She previously worked for Juicero and Forage SF/Forage Kitchen, alongside running her own catering and events business. Her background is in research and nonprofit management. Before joining the food world, she led international data collection and mapping projects focusing on water and health. We sat down with her to discuss the importance of designing the soft infrastructure of institutional food service.

T & UHow would you describe your role in the broader context of food systems and why is it such an important piece of the puzzle?

C OI’m the Director of Design and Consulting for Just Fare, a company that makes food and creates jobs for people that make food. Starting as a food consultancy in 2009, Just Fare was—and still is— about working with clients to show them that there is a better and different way to pursue making food in general, but particularly institutional food where scale really comes into play. I think the real central motivator for Just Fare’s existence is using food as a force for social change. We’re a socially responsible business where our bottom line is important to us, but it’s not the only important thing. We’re working to demonstrate that you can be a for-profit business and still do things in a better way than the classic institutional food or food production model.

T & UHow would you describe this “classic institutional food production model” and what does that look like right now?

When done intentionally, you can create an alternative to that behemoth-style food contractor service.

C OI didn’t pull the data on this but there are some really interesting reports that suggest something on the order of 80% of institutional food in the US is delivered or provided in some way by just three companies. I don’t want to paint them as patently bad, but what we see at that level is a lack of transparency, lower quality, and a concern for how low they can cut their costs and still satisfy their contracts. At the same time, they’re doing whatever the equivalent of “greenwashing” would be to their proposals and their marketing materials. If they were to open their books or share their invoices, you would see that you’re not really getting what you thought you were paying for. I think the fact that those companies occupy such a large market share of institutional food just means that there’s a lot of low-quality food and a lot of low-paying jobs in the food industry. We don’t work at the scale of a Sodexo, providing food for the Chase Center or the UCSF hospital system for instance, but we are here to show how to build food production systems from the ground up with smaller institutions and workplaces. At some point, we would love to grow to a large-scale model to show that, when done intentionally, you can create an alternative to that behemoth-style food contractor service.

T & UWhat distinguishes your approach from that of some of these larger entities?

C OI think there are some obvious things that we do differently: how well we pay our people, what we offer them as far as benefits, where we buy our food from. We’re not Chez Panisse and we’re not buying everything from the absolute best places in the world—not that we wouldn’t want to—but we’re really figuring out how much really good purchasing we can do within our budget. I think that the biggest thing that sets us apart, other than those commitments to people and food, is transparency. We report on impact metrics every year. Our clients have access to our food purchasing invoices if they want. There’s a total transparency policy that we think more people should be making use of, instead of the more typical situation where you’re buying one thing and getting another, or at least not knowing for sure that you’re getting what you’re paying for.

T & UThere are many institutions who might be interested in adopting new, more progressive food practices but not know where to begin. How have you worked with clients to break down larger, more systemic goals and how would you approach the balance between upfront capital costs and ongoing financial considerations?

C OI think the nut that people need to crack is that there is a perception and a reality that it’s more expensive, but you’re either committed to that or you’re not. I think with institutions, and with a lot of businesses for that matter, the approach of a pilot program can be really successful. It’s hard for institutions to say yes to something out of which they have no idea what they’re going to get. Institutions do a lot of things really well, but they don’t necessarily move quickly. Asking an institution to be part of a sea change when they haven’t even seen whether or not a tiny project will be successful is a really big ask, I think.

These types of projects and efforts require what is called “soft infrastructure” —things like relationships, commitments, staffing, and buy-in.

One of the things we try to do is break down the problem and understand it, like where the costs are and which of them we can work with and which of them we can’t. I recently worked on a project with the Emerald Cities Collaborative’s Anchors in Resilient Communities (ARC) program. Through financial modeling, forecasting, the who-what-where-when-why, we developed a really tangible pitch-and-impact strategy to diversify food purchasing among the ARC institutions to include businesses owned by BIPOC food and farm entrepreneurs.

These types of projects and efforts require what is called “soft infrastructure” —things like relationships, commitments, staffing, and buy-in. A lot of these things are people-first elements that develop what we call champions in the conversations and within the institutions. Inside an institution, this could take the form of a “procurement fellow,” a budgeted, 3-year position with the goal of making concrete plans, developing relationships and creating buy-in around larger goals for change.

Lastly, we often work to develop pilots and phased approaches to implementation. Institutions don’t have to do it all at once if it doesn’t feel acceptable but instead could set milestones like “by the end of 2022, 30% of our purchasing is going to come from within a 100-mile radius.” It’s most important to really make it tangible and make it feel like they can achieve something, rather than just write it off because it’s too expensive and they don’t understand how to do it.

T & UWhat’s the cost of continuing the business-as-usual approach to institutional food systems?

C OI think the trap that we’re all in is that over the past hundred years, maybe more, we’ve gotten used to a food system that is supported by cheap labor and cheap food. There’s a concept that we talk about a lot that’s common in these types of conversations that’s called “the true cost of food.” We can live in a world where food and labor are cheap in the budgets of individual companies and organizations, but those numbers don’t reflect what good food and dignified food production actually cost.

Those choices to use cheap food and pay cheap wages for labor come back to bite us in other places.

The question for me is: Where else does that create costs that we’re not accounting for? Those choices to use cheap food and pay cheap wages for labor come back to bite us in other places, even if they don’t hit the budgets that pertain to our institution. So I think it’s a process of letting people know that it’s not sustainable to keep running our food systems in this way. We’re burning out people, we’re burning out the land, we’re burning out our resources. It’s a matter of how we intervene sooner and course-correct and create respectful, dignified jobs and buy products and ingredients that aren’t just mortgaging people and the environment in order to secure a lower bottom line.

T & UIronically, it seems that for a lot of the mission-driven organizations that are fully engaged in large scale social benefit activities or working specifically towards health or labor issues, food is a big blind spot. The food programming that they have is largely not in support of their goals. We feel encouraged that through the combined efforts of many disciplines, including architects and food systems designers and operators like Just Fare, we might come together in the future to change that.

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After opening their doors in Pittsburgh in 2010, Conflict Kitchen transcended cultural boundaries by serving a critical message alongside their takeout. This message was embedded in the kaleidoscopic identity of the restaurant itself, which shifted identities—and cuisines—multiple times a year in order to aesthetically reflect an evolution of cultures with which the US is actively in conflict.

The supergraphic billboard of their architectural facade was an architectural constant, giving each iteration a familiar framework through which to explore an entirely new culture and cuisine. The event of the graphic transformation also signaled a new calendar of cultural programming. During their final iteration, featuring Palestinian cuisine, community members were invited weekly to “Join a Palestinian for Lunch" at the restaurant. In this way, Conflict Kitchen synthesized the architecture, cuisine, and programming in support of a coherent - and quite radical - mission for cultural empathy and awareness.

They transformed the take-out counter into a public threshold for cultural literacy, political dialogue, and the cultivation of community through food.

As perhaps best stated by Seoul-based arts nonprofit, Public Delivery, Conflict Kitchen “open[ed] up the eyes of customers through their stomachs.” They transformed the take-out counter into a public threshold for cultural literacy, political dialogue, and the active and ongoing cultivation of community through food. We were sad to see them go and hope to see other iterations pop-up soon!

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At its core, Food for Soul builds no-waste kitchens that redirect food near expiration from the trashcan back to the dining table. Through holistic, multi-disciplinary collaborations with chefs, local organizations, and designers, restaurant-like settings provide free meals prepared by highly skilled chefs for the socially vulnerable.

Refettorios instantly become community and cultural hubs where they appear.

This disruption to the typical progression of our food systems has become a building typology of its own—not quite a soup kitchen, but not a restaurant either. These “Refettorios,” as Food for Soul calls them, reference the Latin term for “remake” or “restore” and invoke the historical settings in which monks met to dine. Popping up everywhere from Rio de Janeiro to Harlem, Refettorios instantly become community and cultural hubs where they appear, bringing together a host of local organizations for their ongoing operation.

As architects, we are excited by Food for Souls' inclusion of designers as key players in the creation of Refettorios, which typically inhabit renovated or restored spaces in the city that were previously underused. In this way, the Refettorio can also be read as an intervention in urban infrastructure as much as food infrastructure and shows us how food is at once systemic, cultural, and spatial.

With continued plans for expansion, we encourage you to visit the Food for Soul website, where there is information for how you can get involved, no matter your discipline. We’re crossing our fingers for a Refettorio Los Angeles sometime soon!

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