Future Food District Pavilion at Expo Milano 2015 | CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati

At the heart of the exhibition site, just where Kardo and Decumanus streets cross, the Future Food District is one of the thematic areas of EXPO 2015 “Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life”.

Realized in collaboration with COOP, the FFD is composed of a 2500 sqm pavilion (supermarket) and of a 4500 sqm public square. Crossing the two spaces the visitor will be able to explore and make acquaintance with a more ethic and transparent food chain, made possible by the use of new technologies.

The Supermarket is an experimental space, able to generate new interactions between consumers, products and producers: a place where one can find again a direct relation with the industry.

The products are exhibited on large interactive tables - a light touch is enough to obtain augmented information about their characteristics, history and origins. The horizontal landscape fosters contacts and relations, and local producers can use the supermarket as a free-exchange area. As in a traditional market, the buying space becomes a meeting place once again, where technologies create new interfaces and simplify interactions, giving back to the selling chain its social dimension.

Huge screens suspended over the tables provide different information about the products, depending on the user's degree of interaction. A first interactive level allows the user to obtain datas about the article's price and characteristics; a further level, which one might activate just by touching the products, supplies an augmented label revealing product's origins and history.

The square is a sharing space, where other phases of the chain are told. Hydroponic cultures, microalgae canopies, vertical vegetable gardens, show new possibilities for urban agriculture and food and energy production. In the square there are reconfigurable kiosks for the preparation and selling of the food, which will be possible to eat on large “green” tables: round spaces cultivated with herbs and spices. A vertical plotter will write in real-time on the façades of the pavilion the information the visitors will share. It will be exactly the exchange between user and user, and between user and environment to constantly reconfigure the space. An open source way of designing which confirms the central role the consumer has inside the food chain and its locations.