Jeth Owen Guerrero, “The Cooking Commons”

JURY COMMENT

Jeth Owen Guerro proposes a solution of adaptive re-use that has less to do with a building and more with urban communal spaces set in free-standing garages, storage units or low-rise apartments. It rallies around the concept that the gathering, preparing and consumption of food – from backyard gardens and markets to kitchens and the dining table – that involve small -scale collective practices nurture social as well as ecological and financial resilience. It involves a bottom-up approach to community place-making. 
With a ‘how-to’ manual in the form of ‘recipes’, Cooking Commons presents plans, network diagrams and illustrations in an innovative approach that engages landlords, tenants and working organizations/small businesses to collectively arrive at the creation of these spaces. It underscores how the disproportionate effects of climate change will be felt in bringing forward ideas of community access, equity and empowerment. It is an eminently practical and scalable solution that could be easily transferable from its Montreal, Quebec site to any urban location in Canada.