On 5 July 2024, the winners of the Redesign Everything Challenge shared the stories behind their creative innovations at What Design Can Do Live in Amsterdam.
About this winner: A Bite of Extinction focuses on the alarming decline of food diversity and the loss of culinary memory, specifically in the Madrid region. It analyses the globalised food landscape and the tendencies of homogenisation in both cultural preferences and agricultural choices. Scientific research suggests biodiversity to be one of the key factors needed to strengthen our current food system. Simultaneously, national culinary memory is being lost as ingredients keep disappearing, just as the population that used to grow and prepare them are too. In an attempt to link the different players in the food industry—scientists, farmers, cooks and consumers—A Bite of Extinction uses design to inspire action, exchange and awareness. The proposal is made tangible through the rehabilitation of the abandoned Legzapi Fruit & Vegetable Market into a place of encounter and neighbourly spirit—reconnecting Madrileños with the local produce and its flavours, introducing them to the world of agricultural research and empowering them to be a part of rejuvenating the Spanish food system.