The Mobile Food Collective (MFC) is a traveling educational and cultural center that promotes the benefits of healthy eating and inspires a new food culture that incorporates heritage, ownership, exchange, and social connection. The flexible design offers a range of programs through which people can discover their connection to planting and growing, harvesting and sharing, and preparing and enjoying food through cooperation and community. The Mobile Food Collective was exhibited in the United States Pavilion at the 12th International Architecture Exhibition at the 2010 Venice Biennale. In addition to supporting the fabrication of a full-scale prototype of the Mobile Food Collective, Archeworks created a small diagrammatic model and a short film that were displayed in the U.S. Pavilion. Other projects include Bringing People to the Table, an Archeworks publication on the MFC’s international journey from Chicago neighborhoods to Venice piazzas.

The Mobile Food Collective was developed by a multidisciplinary team of Archeworks’s design students.

Mobile Food Collective Project Directors: Mason Pritchett and Jesse Vogler

Archeworks 2009–10 Fellow: Catherine Muller

Archeworks 2009–10 Student Design Team: Rachel Belanger, Maria Kulesa, Derek Layes, Adam Panza, and Geoffrey Salvatore

Design Directors, Archeworks: Martin Felsen and Sarah Dunn

Executive Director, Archeworks: Susanne Schnell

Archeworks was founded in 1994 as an interdisciplinary postgraduate design school where students collaborate with community partners to address social and environmental needs that broadly serve the common good. Our founders, Stanley Tigerman and Eva Maddox, two nationally recognized members of Chicago’s architecture and design community, had a simple premise: design shapes the way we live. The fewer resources communities and individuals have, the more they need great design solutions to enhance their quality of life.