Sustainable Food System Design
Art & Design 398.002 / 500.34, 3 credits
Professor Joe Trumpey
jtrumpey@umich.edu
Office 2085 AAB hours MW 1:30-2:30 and by appointment
517-605-1321 (cell)
This new course will explore a wide variety of contemporary and historic food
systems at several scales including conventional, organic, permaculture. Course
participants will visit Michigan farms and farmer’s markets including sites in
Detroit. Special attention will be given to student farm designs and site visits of
peer institutions will take a central role in design thinking and criticism. Students
will read and present work from a range of contemporary farm / food literature and
will work on completing designs that will 1) take on both a personal focus and 2)
investigate designs specific to the University of Michigan. This is not a studio course
but creative responses will be expected for work submitted.
Topics
Open to a full array of upstream to downstream topics:
Soil Science
Water and nutrient cycles
Seedstock
Livestock
Organic Ag
Conventional Ag
Michigan Ag
Student / Campus Ag
Urban Ag
Food Justice
Food Movements
Food Services
Farmers Markets
Conventional Markets
Preserving
Cooking
Etc.
Course Goals
Develop a working definition of Sustainable Food
Deepen your knowledge of a particular aspect of Food Systems
Develop a research process focused on site evaluation and critical reflection
Enhance and embrace your creative process
Develop a focused design process
Site Visits
The keystone of this course is first hand experience through personal evaluation and
critique of existing food systems. You will need to prepare yourself prior to each visit
and follow up with critical reflection involving images and words.
We will need to work to organize ourselves for a full array of site visits. C-tools, other
web resources and grad students will assist our organization. Fuel costs must be shared
equally among passengers.
Requirement: You will visit a minimum of 5 sites this semester. 3 or more should
support your own particular research / design project.
You will create a kapsul (kapsul.org) to chronicle your site visits.
MW class time
Most Mondays will be used for visitors, presentations, and discussion. Most
Wednesdays will be used for consultation (by sign up) and any group work including
book clubs and pre-site visit preparations. Patience please as the schedule is formed!
Reading
1) Required Text
Thomas A. Lyson: Civic Agriculture
http://www.upne.com/1584654139.html
2) Additional required and recommended digital readings / resources will be posted
on C-tools
3) Book Club
You will self-select into topic groups and agree on reading. Grad students will
facilitate some of the discussion and presentation.
Assignments and Grading
Assignments for ART398 students
Points
Due Date
5 Site Visit Kapsuls @ 140pts each
700
ongoing
Reading reflection Kapsul and presentation 300
ongoing
Design Project
1500__
12/10
Total
2500 possible points
Assignments for ART500 students
Points
Due Date
5 Site Visit Kapsuls @ 140pts each
700
ongoing
Reading reflection Kapsul and presentation 300
ongoing
Team leadership book club
250
ongoing
Team leadership site visits
250
ongoing
Design Project
1500__
12/10
Total
3000 possible points
Evaluation
You are expected to be present and thinking creatively. You will not be
evaluated on technical skills, but rather the thoroughness of your design process.
Please use the Harvard Parenthetical Referencing Style with references.
Evaluation of projects will use a standard 10-point grading scale:
100-97
96-93
92-90
89-87
86-83
82-80
=
=
=
=
=
=
A+
A
AB+
B
B-
79-77
76-73
72-70
69-65
64-00
=
=
=
=
=
C+
C
CD
E
Upcoming site visit suggestions:
September 15
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Jackson-County-FamilyFarmfest/140560289296607
Sept 16
http://www.tillersinternational.org/tillers/events.html
Sept 28
Bus to Trumpey Farm / Zenz Farm