United Arab Emirates

Pressure Cooker asks: Using the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as a case study, how can architecture be mobilised towards greater food security? Pressure Cooker investigates the current relationship between architecture and local methods and systems of food production. By reimagining a series of greenhouse models, the project explores how architecture can respond to food security challenges in the UAE and internationally, resulting in a possible future in which these forms can be integrated throughout our built and lived environments. Rather than starting anew, Pressure Cooker examines existing food-growing infrastructures in the UAE, located in resource-rich landscapes that are often obscured, overlooked, or physically separated from urban centres. Reformulating the greenhouse typology, the project results in a series of contextualised greenhouses, or a kit-of-parts, which not only responds to the UAE’s hot arid climate but also to the local context and the food category that they intend to cultivate. The exhibition explores the possible architectural forms that these micro-climatic conditions could generate, through multiple scenarios of input, output, and assembly.