Anna Meroni: Feeding Milano: a human platform to regain the meaning of slowness [EN]

Food, in Latin cultures, means conviviality, pleasure, taking care of the others and being loved. “Slow food” actually is not so much about cooking and eating slower, than about connecting people, so as to regain meaning for the rituals related tofood in everyday life.

How can the principle of conviviality, as pleasurable and collaborative relationship, change the way a city feed itself? We believe this principle impacts also the way in which producers and consumers get in touch and exchange produce and knowledge.

With the purpose of answering this question, we are creating in Milano, together with Slow Food, a human platform supported by information technology that is designing and prototyping a number of new services to shorten the food chain and feed thecity. We can see this platform as a design supported community that is experimenting a brand new system of possibilities to create a sustainable foodshed, by building a network of trust and sympathy among producers themselves and with consumers. It encourages the last mile to be a human mile and relationships to happen, which implies also for designers being there and creating human links as a way to operate.

We want to challenge the current industrial retail system by making people experience the pleasure of indulging in relationships around food. We want to create a viral system of services that could make happen a big shift. I will be addressing the design challenge of making that possible.