Food waste is not only a challenge for humans, but also a threat to non-human species and the environment. It particularly disrupts the dynamics of ecosystems within urban settings threatening their biodiversity. Comparing to other settings, urban ecosystems result as unsustainable and open-ended, heavily relying on external resources to maintain their functionalities.

Drawing on Morton’s notion of Ecognosis – a new logic of coexistence – the project explores new paradigms of urban inhabitation in the light of the diverse experiences of humans and non-humans. With a focus on Camden Market, the work maps the intertwined lifecycle of the local wildlife, exploring its correlations with a wide range of environmental data.

In our speculative design proposal, food waste is connected through the rhizosphere to a new range of vertical urban allotments, establishing a loop that reconnects the food-chains and lifecycles of humans and non-humans with their environment, restoring the sustainability of the urban fabric.

By offering the design of an adaptive infrastructure which combines wildlife corridors, regreening strategies and farming opportunities, the proposal offers a new paradigm for the co-existence of human and non-human species, transforming the existing urban fabric in a self-organising system and exploring the possibility of post-human, self-sustaining communities.