Harsha Gore

The incorporation of social and urban networks with infrastructural agro-economies forms the proposal; a new heart of food culture within the ports of Old Panama City. The programme is envisioned as an expanding kitchen, incorporating the food cycle onto its site through a series of infrastructural and landscaped plazas.  

The first of these is an open pantry and kitchen, drawing produce from its urban neighbours to respond to food poverty via [re]provision. The second is food distribution and production, using borrowed harvest from the city to [re]configure the urban dining experience: a social and communal dining hall. Finally, a fertilisation and energy plant that recycles urban food waste and rainwater. These outputs [re]form themselves into spaces of food growth and production, creating a new public plaza for the district and completing a food cycle, resulting in a proposal that is entirely self-sufficient. 

The programme blends open-air and sheltered spaces through a series of nested infrastructural ‘vessels’ that connect through purpose-led landscaping. Two large roofs form volumetrically heavy architectural forms while maintaining lightness and communal gathering spaces through integration of market stalls, dining areas, and urban gardens. 

The nested, scalable programmes, imagined as human-scale habitats of care, aim to raise awareness to food waste, food recycling and food provision. They revitalise the heart of food culture by creating spaces that hope to foster conversation, friendship, and autonomy; proposing the sharing of food as a tool to enhance Panama’s identity as a crossroads of culture, ecology, and society.