{"id":27430,"date":"2025-05-08T18:37:29","date_gmt":"2025-05-08T18:37:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=27430"},"modified":"2025-05-08T19:30:52","modified_gmt":"2025-05-08T19:30:52","slug":"at-the-biennale-in-venice-a-fantasy-island-imported-from-mexico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=27430","title":{"rendered":"At the Biennale in Venice, A Fantasy Island Imported from Mexico"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The floating farms known as \u201cchinampas\u201d may have something to teach Venetians and the world.<\/p>\n

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Mexico City\u2019s small urban farms \u2014 known locally as chinampas \u2014 practice a sort of agriculture in reverse: instead of bringing water to land as most farms do, chinampas bring land to water.<\/p>\n

The chinampas in use today go back about a thousand years, to when Aztec farmers began building rectangular fields on top of vast lakes and growing food for what was then the city of Tenochtitlan. There were tens of thousands of chinampas at one point, arranged in strict grids with narrow canals between them, though many were destroyed or abandoned (along with the rest of the Mesoamerican metropolis) after Hern\u00e1n Cort\u00e9s and his invading Spanish soldiers rearranged the civic order in 1521.<\/p>\n

But working chinampas continue to exist in the southern Mexico City neighborhood of Xochimilco \u2014 despite continuing encroachment by developers and competition from factory farms \u2014 operating mostly as family businesses that produce heirloom lettuce, radishes, dahlias and other crops. Lately, the farms\u2019 irrigation-friendly ways are getting fresh attention in a world rocked by climate change and suffering from widespread droughts.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Could other places around the globe borrow the idea of creating \u201cfloating islands,\u201d as the fields are sometimes called, which are engulfed by water? A team of Mexican designers, landscapers and farmers believes the ancient technology may be widely adaptable, enough that they will recreate a chinampa for their country\u2019s pavilion at this year\u2019s Architecture Biennale in Venice.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Lucio Usobiaga has spent the last 15 years defending the remaining chinampas through Arca Tierra, the nonprofit he founded.<\/span>Uta Gleiser<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cChinampas have a simple and intelligent design, created in a collective way that benefits not only people but all of the surrounding living beings, too,\u201d said Lucio Usobiaga, a team member who has spent the last 15 years defending the remaining chinampas through a nonprofit he founded called Arca Tierra<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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The floating farms known as \u201cchinampas\u201d may have something to teach Venetians and the world.Mexico City\u2019s small urban farms \u2014 known locally as chinampas \u2014 practice a sort of agriculture in reverse: instead of bringing water to land as most farms do, chinampas bring land to water.The chinampas in use today go back about a thousand years, to when Aztec farmers began building rectangular fields on top of vast lakes and growing food for what was then the city of Tenochtitlan. There were tens of thousands of chinampas at one point, arranged in strict grids with narrow canals between them, though many were destroyed or abandoned (along with the rest of the Mesoamerican metropolis) after Hern\u00e1n Cort\u00e9s and his invading Spanish soldiers rearranged the civic order in 1521.But working chinampas continue to exist in the southern Mexico City neighborhood of Xochimilco \u2014 despite continuing encroachment by developers and competition from factory farms \u2014 operating mostly as family businesses that produce heirloom lettuce, radishes, dahlias and other crops. Lately, the farms\u2019 irrigation-friendly ways are getting fresh attention in a world rocked by climate change and suffering from widespread droughts.Could other places around the globe borrow the idea of creating \u201cfloating islands,\u201d as the fields are sometimes called, which are engulfed by water? A team of Mexican designers, landscapers and farmers believes the ancient technology may be widely adaptable, enough that they will recreate a chinampa for their country\u2019s pavilion at this year\u2019s Architecture Biennale in Venice.Lucio Usobiaga has spent the last 15 years defending the remaining chinampas through Arca Tierra, the nonprofit he founded.Uta Gleiser\u201cChinampas have a simple and intelligent design, created in a collective way that benefits not only people but all of the surrounding living beings, too,\u201d said Lucio Usobiaga, a team member who has spent the last 15 years defending the remaining chinampas through a nonprofit he founded called Arca Tierra.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27432,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27430"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27430\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27433,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27430\/revisions\/27433"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/27432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}