Small urban farms in Mexico City – known locally as Chinanpus – practice some kind of farming, on the contrary. Instead of bringing water to the land, as is the case with most farms, Chainapah brings the land into the water.
The Chinanpus, now in use, returns to about 1,000 years ago, until Aztec farmers began building rectangular fields on vast lakes and growing food for the city of Tenochitlan at the time. At one point there were tens of thousands of Chinipans, placed on strict grids with narrow canals between them, but many were destroyed or abandoned after Hernan Cortes and his invading Spanish soldiers repositioned the civil order in 1521 (along with the rest of the Mesoamerican metropolitan city).
However, Xochimilco's South Mexico City district continues to work in Xochimilco's South Mexico City district despite invasions by developers and competition with factory farms. Recently, irrigation-friendly methods of farms have attracted new attention in a world that has been rocked by climate change and suffered from widespread drought.
Can other places around the world borrow the idea of creating “floating islands” as fields are sometimes called and wrapped in water? A team of Mexican designers, landscapers and farmers believe that ancient technology could be widely adapted, and that it would be sufficient to replicate the Chainapas for their country's pavilion at this year's Venice architectural biennale.
“Chinanpus has a simple, intelligent design, created in a collective way that benefits not only people but all the living things around them,” said Lucio Usobiaga, a team member who has defended the remaining Chainampa over the past 15 years through a nonprofit organization known as Arca Tierra.
The Mexican pavilion is perfect for the major exhibition “Intelligent. Natural. Artificial. Group.” Chinanpus is quickly artificial and organic, and can only be successful if you are staring closely at corn and herd fields, with the number of farmers, policymakers and tourists floating on popular canoe tours.
Promoting Chinnampa as an inspiration for eco-friendly design was a clear choice for the Biennale, team members said. “Venice is also built on water and has the same kind of vulnerability as Xochimilco,” said Ana Paula Ruiz Galindo, founder of design company Pedro Y Juana.
They pointed out that Venice and Xochimilco were added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in the same year in 1987, and that both locations are island communities where boats can sail, working to balance the positive and negative aspects of tourism.
Venice has an iconic gondola, while Xochimilco has traginella, flat boats, decorated in bright colors and fake flowers that take visitors on party-themed excursions. Both boats are run by pilots who use long poles to push along the channel.
I had to have imagination when it came to how to recreate Chain Pickup on site. And compromise.
The Aztecs built the island over time using the branches and branches of re to create fences at the bottom of re. These formed the boundaries of multiple layers of sediment and decayed vegetation (and human sewers) until the island rose above enough water to farm. In addition to cultivating crops such as corn, beans and squash, the traditional Milpa farming method, which naturally preserves nutrients in the soil, was used to plant trees in the corners of the island to stabilize the land.
The Mexican pavilion is located within the Biennale's Arsenel complex and features a stripped version that is much smaller than the 500 square metres (0.12 acres) of a typical Chainapau. The exhibition will be enhanced by a video produced in Mexico City featuring authentic Chinamperos, as farmers are called, with bleachers set up along the walls. Artificial lighting replaces the sunlight.
In the center is a working garden planted with vegetables, flowers and herbs. (The crops began at Italian nursery schools and were transported by boat to Arsenel in mid-April.) They mature during the biennale that continues until November 23rd.
“By the end of the biennale, we can harvest corn and make tortillas,” Usobiaga said. “Before that, you can harvest beans, squash, tomatoes and chili.”
Visitors will have the opportunity to learn about special seed cultivation techniques endemic to Chinanpus and plant their seedlings themselves.
Nodding to local agriculture, chimppas also adopt a version of Vite Maritata, a practice established in ancient Etruscan agriculture, which demands planting grapes around trees. The exhibition team is looking at the link between two forms of agricultural immersion, combining trees and crops into one ecosystem.
“We see this dialogue between the two ancient cultures and we both talk a lot about how we can move forward,” Usobiaga said.
Members of the exhibition team said they wanted to be careful not to make Chinanpus overly romantic, as it is not easy to replicate easily on a scale that can feed today's masses. The farm works in Mexico City. Because they sit in a lake with no exit to another body of water, allowing water levels to be controlled relatively easily. The opposite is of course true in Venice, which is located in a lagoon close to the sea and is constantly under threat from floods.
Also, small farms' economy – high production costs, low yields due to their size, making it difficult to make profits. Farm workers' wages are generally too low to support urban people, so repeated planting and harvesting jobs have lost fame.
“This is a big problem here. People, especially young people, don't want to work on the soil of Chainampus anymore,” said Maria Marin de Buen, the team's graphic designer.
Even Xochimilco has many Chinampas fallow because their owners can't make a living. Some have been converted to soccer fields and are being rented to the community. Other venues are event venues where people celebrate weddings and birthday parties. Officially, the land is restricted from development, from cattle grazing and hunting for endangered species, but these things happen with an astonishing frequency.
Still, the team sees the connection between nature and the built environment, the need to build existing water resources and homes and schools, namely inspirational things. Architects visiting the Biennale cannot design large strips of farmland, but can replicate ideas on a smaller scale using conditions that exist, said Jachen Schleich, a team member who is principal at Mexico City's architecture firm Dellekamp + Schleich.
“If someone does this in his backyard, he can at least feed his family, or the people on the fourth floor of his building. “It could be something like a microintervention in a landscape or public space.”
