Farmer Designers

It’s increasingly important for humans to unlearn and find new ways of living and especially in growing our food. The show ‘Farmers designers: an art of living’ at the Bordeaux Museum of Decorative Arts and Design explores these fundamental questions.

Tools for an agroecological transition at the Bordeaux Museum of Decorative Arts and Design

The exhibition, fully devoted to farming design, looks into 20th-century industrialization which has profoundly transformed our soils in order to feed more people, more effectively. Food has become an incredibly complex arena; from farm to fork, many different processes come into play to feed a growing population.

“Those known as “farmer-researchers” are experimenting with new practices.”

Farmers face many challenges. Like designers, farmers are inventing new processes, taking into account the specific features of the context and tools, which they reinvent and apply. A new generation of farmers is looking to feed us while regenerating the soil rather than exploiting it. The exhibition makes soil the central focus.

Sourdough, the unsuspected matrix of bread

“The connection the the earth, the scale of crops and production, offers insights into new farming practices, and reexamines the dimension of time. The exhibition explores the origins of a new culture of people that are connected with nature and repositions them in a more humble relationship of living beings, plants and animals.”

Why this matters

Design as a discipline has moved from the traditional concept of the visual or tangible artefact through to orchestrating interactions and experiences, and to transforming systems. It’s not just for people with ‘design’ in their job title. Even if you don’t call yourself a ‘designer’, you might still play a critical role in the design stage and determine the attributes and characteristics of future products, services and systems.

The exhibition continued off-site in the farms and vineyards associated with the exhibition.

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