Tell us a little bit about the background and the aim of your project… 

In the early 20iest century an initiative called „one kitchen house“ was envisioned. The idea originated from Lily Braun, a famous woman’s rights activist in Austria. These „one kitchen houses“ were apartment buildings that had only one central kitchen instead of each apartment having a full-size kitchen of it’s own. The central kitchen was run by professionals, so that families and especially woman would be liberated from this labour. Nowadays this idea could have a rival, not only emphasizing the community aspect of a shared kitchen or the convenience of pre-cooked meals, but also by imagining buildings as eco-systems of there own. Connected with rooftop gardens to grow food, this buildings could be much more resilient and resource-efficient. The kitchen staff could also take care of the gardens and make sure that kitchen waste is again introduced into the system turning this into a closed loop.

Tell us a little bit about the creative aspect of your project…

Community rooftop gardens connected with community kitchens seemed as something obvious and realistic to be integrated in the near future. Therefor it was important for us to illustrate it in a rather familiar way, choosing a more cheerful game-like look. By using an axonometric view we wanted to emphasize the systemic approach to the project, expressing that this could be multiplied to various housing types. We also wanted the possibility for the viewer to be able to „zoom in“, having a macro and micro vision at the same time. 

 What are appropriate means for you to foster the inspiration towards future scenarios in general?

The greatest challenge in illustrating scenarios or future ideas is that there always needs to be a certain abstraction or openness, so that the viewer still can generate his own ideas. At the same time and this is tricky, there need to be a certain detailedness so the imagination is triggered. Renderings nowadays are so realistic that they can limit the imagination sometimes. But there is such a wide range of other possibilities especially in using mixed media illustrations, from water colors, collages to computer based graphics, the possibilities are almost endless.