Innovation School MDes Design Innovation & Environmental Design

Ana Guerrero (she/her)

Ana is an integral designer with more than ten years of experience working with government and private institutions. She aims to apply design innovation as a catalyst for positive social change to improve human and non-human relationships with the environment.

Contact
by.ana.guerrero@gmail.com
A.FGuerrero1@student.gsa.ac.uk
byanaguerrero
Ana Guerrero
Projects
The Living Library

Collaborative Work
Circular Fashion Box

The Living Library

Food is at the heart of civilisations, given its importance for human subsistence, flourishing and well-being. It has always been linked to local cultures. In the past, our ancestors developed culinary traditions based on what the land provided.  Food was an essential cultural element that bound people together, enforced a shared sense of identity, and strengthened community and belonging.

Nowadays, due to industrial agriculture, our diets are converging. More than 40 per cent of our daily calories come from three staple crops: rice, wheat and maise. Markets have changed in the last few decades; the affluence of high-quality vegetable seeds produced industrially has a detrimental influence on the cultivation of local crop varieties for small producers worldwide.

Agro-biodiversity is the variety and variability of the plants, animals, micro-organisms, and biocultural systems linked to food. Many critical components of agro-biodiversity at genetic, species and ecosystems levels are in decline. The proportion of species at risk of extinction is increasing. Agro-biodiversity is indispensable to food security and sustainable development. It makes production systems and livelihoods more resilient to shocks and stresses. Moreover, seed standardisation not only limits crop diversity but knowledge and culture.

There are currently two main methods for agrobiodiversity conservation, ex-situ conservation, which implies preserving species outside their natural habitat, such as gene banks, where the varieties as seeds in cold store and then grow in different habitats. This method is accessible primarily to professional scientists and breeders. On the other hand, in-situ conservation is performed in the sites where plants developed their distinctive properties. It allows the preservation of knowledge associated with crops, the cultural valorisation of resources, and the continuation of dynamic crop processes of adaptation to climate, pests, diseases, and socio-cultural context.

Although significant progress has been made in ex-situ conservation, most agricultural biodiversity is conserved in farmers’ fields through its continuous cultivation. Thus, the role of farmers is highly strategic to the preservation of diversity at a global level, playing a predominant role. Unfortunately, this contribution remains mainly in the shadows and is often seen as support to the work of researchers.

The biodiversity present in any landscape results from interactions between biological, ecological, environmental, social and cultural processes. Although many traditional food practices have been lost, there is still a chance to recover and strengthen local food systems to leverage long-standing knowledge and practices to preserve biodiversity and benefit from it today and in the future.

Another important factor within the food system is the ageing of the farmer population. Agriculture does not represent a hopeful future for younger generations due to the harsh and unprofitable industry, a risk for the global food future. In the UK, the average age of a farmer is 59, which points out a significant impact on biodiversity conservation, particularly for heirloom varieties; many older growers die with their seeds and knowledge before trespassing them to someone else, leading to the imminent extinction of unique lines. The lack of knowledge transmission to younger generations represents a severe threat to the conservation of the diversity of traditional crops since knowledge is required to cultivate, validate, and continuously improve resources to adapt them to new needs.

My proposal to address this situation is The Living Library, a system composed of one digital and one physical tool aimed to connect different generations of growers to share and preserve knowledge around agro-biodiversity. The Living Library is a physical space for the local growers to connect with the community that aims to recognise and re-value growers’ knowledge and acknowledge their crucial role as a conservationist, at the time that promotes participation as biodiversity conservators to other members of the community.

The Living Library will allow the community to connect with their culture, identity and culinary heritage—reintegrating the production and consumption of food as something joyful and participatory. The digital platform is the compendium of the knowledge from different growers around the UK and their stories; this tool aims to facilitate the documentation and sharing of growers knowledge related to agro-biodiversity to the public in general. It offers a local biodiversity mapping that will serve as a monitoring programme for agro-biodiversity. This network can help local communities engage in collective management practices and recognising and valuing people’s knowledge and wisdom as central to social transformation.

The Living Library promotes biodiversity conservation:

  • By connecting different generations of farmers to preserve traditional knowledge, practices and culture.
  • By strengthening the sense of identity, ownership and pride among farmers’ communities.
  • By the recognising and re-valuing growers’ knowledge and their crucial role as a conservationist.

The global strategic plans for biodiversity conservation should be based not only on institutional and private plant breeders and seedbanks but mainly on the vast number of growers who continuously select, improve, and use agro-biodiversity at the local scale. Conservation and innovation in agrobiodiversity depend on the continuous exchange of knowledge and experiences, seeds and cultivation techniques between generations and between individuals and communities.

The Living Library gathers a sample of the agro-biodiversity from local growers and their significant work to preserve it.
The map at the entrance aims to recognize the local agro-biodiversity and shows the work of the local growers to preserve their culinary heritage. The contact details are on the map for all the local growers who want to join The Living Library.

How does it work

The digital platform is the compendium of the knowledge from different growers around the UK and their stories; this tool aims to facilitate the documentation and sharing of growers knowledge related to agro-biodiversity.

Presentation

This is my final presentation.

Circular Fashion Box

The desire to accumulate wealth is instinctive to all animals regardless of species. We do this to signify dominance, desirability, and even self fulfillment. As humans we are not above this primal instinct and in fact have cultivated it into our very own cultural fabric. To distinguish ourselves from our consumption is now nearly impossible… but the evidence is undeniable that our consumer behaviours are having a truly detrimental effect on our climate and futures. With this project we look to leverage a reimagined service model that invokes long term behaviour change and new relationships with our consumer nature. People will continue to “shop” but can we make how they shop and what they buy more ethical and socially sustainable.

This project introduces a circular economics service model that makes encourages consumers to “wear the original” and trade in for “new pieces”. This keeps societies consumptive nature in consideration while moving to a more sustainable mindset and diminishing the idea of independent ownership and waste while retaining the desired usability, convenience and price of faster fashion models.

This was a collaborative project and was submitted for this year’s RSA Student Design Awards.

Project Title

Solution Title

Summary

Foundation

Research

Solution & Storytelling

Regenerative model

Paper Prototype

Wireframe of digital system