All in the - American University of Beirut

Thomas (a former colleague of Young)and Bernard Mallet. Both groups ofstudents were tasked with documentingthe food networks that sustain their cities,focusing in particular on the social,built, and ecological matrices connectedto the Union Square Greenmarket inNew York and to the Souk El Tayeb(SET) farmers market in Beirut.Young, who conceived City as Labas an independent faculty-to-faculty initiativethat allows for a flexible cross-cityand cross-disciplinary channel for collaboration,explains the rationale behindthe pairing of New York and Beirut:“Both cities face the same pressures ofdensity, distribution, and price when itcomes to food choices and availabilityin this context. Fast food chains andglobal suppliers step into the market tochallenge and displace local producersand local food practices.”As a way of documenting theseissues, during two weeks in the spring,the students created dossiers aboutthemselves including everything theyate in their home cities. This sharing ofinformation about urban lifestyles wasconveyed through the range of socialmedia: YouTube, Tumblr, email, andFacebook. Even before they met, “Thestudents got to know each other prettywell during the course of this exercise,”says Young. “The New York studentswere super impressed by the AUBstudent design skills, but they wereshocked by the amount of fast foodthey ate. They had romantic notionsabout Lebanon and were not preparedfor this information.”Having built up a clearer picture ofhow the other half lives based on foodhabits, the AUB students paired upwith New School students to conductresearch on their cities’ farmers markets.The New York City students carried outspecific site research for their Beirutcounterparts to allow AUB students todesign market “pods” for Union Squareproducers of honey, mushrooms, flowers,wine, or salad greens. These small,city-based units allow farmers to growand sell produce in situ in New Yorkand give them the possibility of sleepingover on market days rather than drivingback and forth to the country. Assessingthis part of the collaboration Thomastold MainGate: “The collaboration withthe students in New York enriched thestudio for the AUB students on several20 MainGate Fall 2011 | www.aub.edu.lb/maingate