Reinterpreting urban underground spaces for the production and conservation of foodsfuffs in Modern and Contemporary History

The proposal for this session was elaborated by Teresa Colletta and me after having attended EXPO 2015 in Milan the AISU conference in Padova "the food and the city". The idea was born in consideration that until the days of collective use, and subsequent private use, of refrigerating devices, a fundamental issue of urban life was how to store and conserve foodstuffs. Considering the extremely high value of food with respect to the average income, it was also necessary to make sure that conservation also ensured prevention of theft. The theme of conservation in this sector, since it is connected to a primary necessity, has become an integral factor of many quite disconnected areas of urban life: from production and transformation to the sale of foodstuffs, to defense on both a private and public level, to solving the problems of seasonal availability and rationing in times of hardship. Conservation of foodstuffs can therefore be considered a longstanding problem in the history of the larger urban areas and above all, in the merchant sea ports. The use of the underground in this respect is a typically urban phenomenon. Perishable goods required conserving and stocking and having often been transported a distance from their place of production, conservation had to be carried out in such a way as to preserve their basic qualitative characteristics. As well as those underground spaces created and adapted specifically for conserving the organic and organoleptic properties of perishable foodstuffs, the underground has also been used for certain transformational processes. In some cases, food transformation underground has resulted in such typifying qualities of the final product, that the same methods were employed even after the arrival of new refrigerating technology. Underground store rooms, cellars, cisterns, caves and ice houses etc. have been for a very long period a precious ally in the solution of critical problems regarding the conservation of foodstuffs. The use of the underground for the transformation of foodstuffs not only increased the possible time lapse between the production of the food and that of its transformation, and then of its ultimate consumption, but also influenced possible food types. This in turn influenced the eating habits and the cuisine of the urban populations. The necessity for ad hoc underground deposits has been the responsibility of both the public and private sectors, so different means and systems have been adopted in different urban areas. Frequently, however the architecture actually put into practice below the surface has been totally unrelated to that on the urban surface, often overriding any accepted European canon of urban development, health and safety. As far as a research into the conservation procedures for foodstuffs is concerned, separating these processes from an analysis of the rest of the urban complex runs alongside recurring attempts to identify an orderly urban plan amid the consolidated structure of the historical towns. These dual approaches stem from the fact that the public buildings reserved for the conservation of staple foodstuffs are the fruit of activities which are well separated from each other, and are likely therefore to be carried out in different urban areas. This separation can be accounted for thus: underground, because they are more easily defendable and even if distant from the urban centre, always well connected to merchant ports. The aim of the session is to gather as many examples as possible which analyse the role of the underground in the management of urban requirements in the foodstuff sector with a view to a long term comparative study which may answer the following questions: in what way has the underground been decisive in the ability of