How I see my thesis work two years later

I got a mail today from a architecture student in Aukland. She asked me about my thesis project since she was interested in doin a project on the same topic. 

I started thinking and was brought back to the process of producing that project. I bet you all know that feeling of -"If I only would have..." haha. Anyway here is my reply, think it can be useful for architecture students dealing with consept and projects not directly related to buildning. Therefor I'm posting my mail here as well.

Hi

I'm flattered by your mail. Thank you for your kind words. 

My written report is in Swedish only, so I don't think you'll get that much out of it. 

Since this is a topic I'm really interested in I'm going to try to summarize some thoughts for you (as well as for myself).  Now, two years after finishing my thesis project I see my project in a bit of a new perspective. Therefore summarizing it now is a lot different from how I would have summarized it two years ago. Here it goes anyway:

-I wish that I would have had a clearer trajectory, both towards myself and towards teachers and co-students. Unfortunately I got caught in between architecture as building/structure and architecture as narrative/polemics. Unfortunately I did not do any of the two with full power; rather I did both with hesitation. This mistake happened both because of me listening to too many teachers subjective opinions, and that I didn't have enough trust in my own ideas. 

That said I would like to encourage you to specify what your interest in the topic is (In this case food and food production). 

-Is it the production, such as growing plants, slaughtering and fishing? 

-Is it taking care of leftovers?

-Is it the preparation, such as a kitchen/restaurant etc.? 

-Is it exposing what is hidden in the massive distribution chains before the food land on our plate?

-Is it the consumption of food, such as the shopping and/or the eating?

-Is it the cultural aspect?

...or is it something else?

Whichever you choose to focus on, your project has the possibility to become great (or shit). You just need to stick to what you believe in. If I only would have trusted my own idea more... 

My scheme built on exposing food production. I wanted to do this in as raw a way as possible, without the nice wrapping the grocery stores offer. After reading up on the systems beneath the production chains, my interest fell on a closed loop system to also show what is happening with the waste and how waste is useful to create the next batch of food (manure, energy etc.). I sketched up a diagrammatic system where food traveled through four machines, one for meat, one for fish, one for veggies and one for recycling (i.e. biogas). But then I got scared and turned these machines in to sculptures within a cook school, because you need to have a building to put the stuff into, right??? Because building=architecture! ...right??? OOOOH NO!!! There everything went wrong... Because you don't need to have a building to create architecture! Architecture can be what you want it to be. It could definitely be the four machines that you could interact with. Maybe I should do that project :)

So remember: Architects can be artists. Architects can be poets. Architects can do movies. Architects can build fantastic machines. And of course architects can do buildings and landscapes (but we don't have to).

However you do your project be prepared to be faced and criticized by traditionally bound teachers and colleagues if you don't go the ordinary way. But maybe it's worth it. I got a really hard critique when presenting my project both because what I've told you now (regarding the weakness in trajectory) and also because they thought it was a bit strange to approach an architectural project by exposing the "ugliness" of food production through a type of activism, instead of doing proper disposition of rooms and focusing on light and sight lines.

Hope this somewhat answered your question without being able to provide you with my thesis report.

Please contact me again if you think of anything regarding this topic or other stuff as well for that matter.

All the best 

somewhere around here I'd say the project was at it's best