KATA FODOR | KITCHEN THINK-OVER | PORTFOLIO
KATA FODOR
Architect MAA & Doctoral Candidate
Photo by : ©Aleksandra Kononchenko
Research on 21st-century Food Spaces
My research examines what the spatial implications/ preconditions are of facilitating ‘Sustainable Diets’ in affluent Western cities. With particular regards to demographic changes, technological developments and environmental challenges, it considers how our latest food-systems-knowledge can be embedded into spatial design, as a research-based and multidisciplinary form of creative practice.
The spatial design fields - concerned with accommodating our rapidly urbanising world - have yet to sufficiently address how any desirable shifts in urban food practices can be spatially facilitated. With the exception of urban farming, the spatial implications of sustainable urban food logistics, retail, food preparation and waste management are far from being well understood. Yet, given how significantly spatial logics - on all scales from the layout of one’s kitchen up to larger urban configurations - dictate people’s behaviours and implicitly define what is convenient to do on a societal level, these questions are all the more urgent.
Considering these issues in the context of affluent Western cities, I ask how their spatial development and models of affordable housing could facilitate positive changes in their food practices - what the design implications would be for housing developments, what design traditions/conventions we should abandon, and where we need to invent new solutions. More broadly, how our future urban food spaces could simultaneously respond to demographic changes, technological developments and environmental concerns. My research approaches these questions in two ways: Through the study of contemporary food practices in - the increasingly dominant demographic of - non-familial households. And second, through the observation of an ongoing urban phenomenon, which I propose to call the ‘the hybridisation of food spaces’ – that is, a tendency of diversifying their functional programmes physically while also merging their operations with virtual platforms.
project: Babette's Feast 2017 | Public Town Feast in Fredericia, Denmark
KATA FODOR
Architect MAA & Doctoral Researcher
I'm an Architect / urban designer focusing on the relationship between affordable housing and urban food systems. I'm a co-founder of the multidisciplinary design studio Atelier Kite, and have recently joined the NODUS Sustainable Design Research Group at Aalto University to undertake a PhD titled ‘Kitchen Think-over: The Spatial Implications of Sustainable Diets’. My research directly complements my design practice - developing collaborative urban food spaces across European cities. I have worked on a range of projects in Denmark, Ireland, Austria and in the UK, where my work has also been exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts. At Aalto University I also teach Systems Thinking, as well as advise theses in the Creative Sustainability Master programme.
EVENTS I ORGANISED & CO-ORGANISED
Some of the events I'm most proud to have been involved in organising and hosting include:
• Nodus Talks series 2018-2019, Design Museum of Helsinki (video here)
• Welfare City Futures Symposium at Aalto University, 2019 (programme here),
• EASA 2017: Hospitality (event site), Fredericia, Denmark - an annual international architecture summer school
ARCHITECTURAL & DESIGN EDUCATION
• Doctoral Studies (ongoing) since 2018 at Aalto University, Department of Design, supervisor: Prof. Mikko Jalas
• MAA, 2015 - The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts | Urbanism & Societal Change programme
• Bachelor of Architecture, 2013 - Academy of Fine Arts Vienna | IKA
PREVIOUS WORK
Prior to starting Atelier Kite, I have worked for:
• Viennese architecture practices feld72 and querkraft
• property developers, local councils, charities and community initiatives
TALKS | PANELS | CONFERENCES
• Systems Thinking for Impact at the Entrepreneurship Winter School of Aalto University, 2024
• YHYS Colloquium: Sustainable Welfare. The Spatial Implications of Food Citizenship (link), Aalto University, 2021
• Eating for 1.5°C: Round Table on Climate Change and Sustainable Diets (link), The American University of Rome, 2021
• Accommodating Urban Food Futures, Nodus Talks + Design Museum (link), Helsinki, 2021
• Sustainable Food Systems < > Sustainable Diets Conference (link) The American University of Rome, 2019
• How to Make a Just Food Future: Alternative Foodways for a Changing World Conference (link), Univeristy of Sheffield, 2019
• Future Food Symposium (link), University of Nottingham, 2019
• Sustainability Science Days: Innovations in Sustainable Food Systems (link), Aalto University, 2019
PUBLISHED WRITING
Fodor, K. 2022. 'Design at the End of the Food System: Hybrid Foodscapes in the Realm of Consumption'. In C. Sage (Ed.), A Research Agenda for Food Systems. (pp.243-257). Edward Elgar. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781800880269.00021 (link to the book) (chapter manuscript here)
Fodor, K. 2021. The Hybridization of Food Spaces: Changing Spatial Logics in Urban Food Systems and Prospects for Sustainable Diets. The International Journal of Sociology of Agriculture and Food. 27, 1 (Jun. 2021), 102-118. DOI:https://doi.org/10.48416/ijsaf.v27i1.83. (open access pdf here)
Fodor, K. 2018. Lessons from launching an alternative architectural practice. Architectural Design. 88, 3 (May. 2018), 62-67
