Honorable Mention: SHANGHAI FOOD BASKET

Located in Shanghai, China, the Shanghai Food Basket is an educational food hub designed to bridge the gap between farmers and consumers. The vision for the Shanghai Food Basket is a place not only for food marketing and food production but also a destination to educate people on sustainable food consumption and hone their skills and hobbies about food.

Allowing people to see, feel, and taste the food is a concept used to understand and fully appreciate the whole process of the food. Shanghai Food Basket is an architectural innovation that functions as the central food hub sustainably serving the community and the smaller scale market.

Lately, urban dwellers have been more aware of their health and have been looking for organic and fresh food. However, most of the consumers are not aware of how their food reaches their table. The complexity of the program signifies the whole food chain, along with the modern method of urban farming. The project allows urban dwellers to gain knowledge about food production, food distribution, food processing, and the importance of food waste recovery. The project includes a welcoming opening space and a public food market and retails on the ground. The upper four levels are for restaurants, shared kitchen, taste kitchen, educational area for cooking classrooms and food galleries, vertical farming, and offices.

The food hub has a central atrium waterfall at the center of the structural design. The idea of the central waterfall is to create a focal attraction to the public and collects the rainwater to be reused on-site. Inspired from the form of a Banyan tree and through the biomimicry approach, the form of the steel structure visualizes a light yet durable structure. It invites an ample amount of natural daylight to pass through the atrium and the modules. Each programs of the food chain process are distributed into different modules and are strategically placed and interconnected inside the steel structure while maintaining the process flow of the food production. Various types of fruit-bearing plants and vegetation are placed on the ground floor and around the steel structure, creating a lush green environment.