Ecotonal Landscape of Food Cultivation: Relocalising Agriculture on Zurich’s Gold CoastVirginia Chavarría Elvir, Spyridon Karakostas, and Maria Konstantina Tsigka
Meilen, on Zurich’s “Gold Coast,” was historically an agricultural landscape characterized by vineyards and orchards along the lakeshore. Driven by its privileged southern exposure, panoramic views, and landscape protection regulations, the area has become increasingly attractive for high-end residential development, resulting in a significant decline in food production over recent decades. This shift highlights a process of food gentrification, in which the dominant form of “production” is no longer agricultural output but rather leisure and lifestyle value.
Today, extensive areas of the region’s most fertile soils are occupied by meadows and pastures, in some cases supporting leisure-oriented activities such as luxury horse keeping. As agricultural land is increasingly detached from its productive function, the relationship between farming practices, land use, and food provision becomes unstable, creating a growing disconnect between the territory and its capacity to sustain food cultivation. This condition reveals a need to reconfigure the spatial and social relationships between the different ecologies that configure the landscape.
Starting from the concept of the ecotone as a zone of ecological transition and territorial opportunity, the project envisions Meilen and the Pfannenstiel region as an Ecotonal Landscape, which intensifies and expands the points of encounter between forests, agricultural practices, and local communities, generating new nourishing and caring relationships around food. Within this framework, the project builds on the existing social network of actors and activates institutions such as schools, which together with local farms, set the foundations for a hyperlocal food network that enables coordinated planning and more stable food system organization grounded in reciprocity and care.