It did not require a lot of thinking until the idea popped up in my mind: food systems. That had to be the key for an innovative strategy for societal innovation, turning the rural into the innovation engine, even for urban development.

It was in January 2018 and I had just started reflecting on Duved, asked to find a strategy for the development of the future of this small village in the North of Sweden, situated in an area know for skiing and hiking, but also for artisan food.

In the small scale of the village I saw something that had been in the back of my mind for a few years. I had been talking to chefs like Dan Barber, Magnus Nilsson and Douglas McMaster, and realised that their way of transforming the production system of food from the point of view of a restaurant, was in fact a starting-point for change in a much larger context than the restaurant itself. What they did, in redefining their roles as chefs, required change from everyone they were working with.

A couple of years earlier, in 2015, I was commissioned to lead the innovation program for the USA pavilion at the World’s Fair in Milan. The theme of the Expo 2015 was how to feed the planet in 2050. One part of the program I curated was to ”exhibit” and accelerate nine new companies, all with different ideas of food-system innovation. We selected them carefully and they were all based on smart and relevant ideas. But I gradually realised that there was something lacking in the very idea of the start-up company: context.
The companies had solutions, but for a very specific, singular purpose. What they lacked – and what would have made their ideas better – was a context. A context where the singular solution of one company would be matched by another company’s solution in a different field of food. Through collaboration and digital efficiency, the different solutions could, gradually, be turned into a new and innovative local food system.

So, with these two things in my mind – the innovative chefs and what they demanded of their suppliers, and the new companies need for a context to match their solution with, I saw a glimpse of something big.
The future of food and food systems needed the small scale of the village to show its potential.

That was the starting point of Duved as a tool for societal change, based on collaboration between very many local partners, a journey that will take a few years to handle and that will include a greenhouse by Shigeru Ban.
Giving a lecture, in 2018, on Duved at the School of Architecture in Umeå, the deputy dean, Sara Thor, and I continued to talk and came to the conclusion that she would set up a summer studio in Duved, where students would come up with solutions for a common local future food system.

The result?
Through the studio visionary material was produced by the students that will be used as inspiration for many years to come in the actual development of Duved, on food systems as well as, as a given on the side, on where the possibilities of the future role of the architect might be embedded.
It is all about switching positions, to find a better outlook on today’s possibilities – instead of cities and buildings we need to look at the rural and on the future (local) food systems to move ahead toward what is needed, for the rural as well as the urban.

Duved 220930
Jan Åman