About

About me

Hi! I am Will van Twuijver, a designer, researcher and farmer working on sustainable design processes. My work is informed by an overarching goal to design and develop systems that integrate environmental restoration and human wellbeing. In practice, my work is focused on the intersection of agroecology, climate adaptation and grassroots-initiatives.

Focusing on this intersection allows me to explore alternative forms of organising based on solidarity principles, return to a human-scale and increase awareness of the natural processes that form the basis of all life. I have several years of involvement in grassroots initiatives that explore such alternatives, including projects that involve Community Supported Agriculture, waste food processing collectives and home-brewing.

In 2012 I graduated with a bachelor’s in interior architecture at Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam, followed by a master’s in Collaborative & Industrial Design at the Aalto University, Finland in 2019. To further deepen my understanding of sustainability and design, I completed multiple courses on related topics. Such as a minor study on Sustainability, a certified permaculture design course, a two-year course in biodynamic agriculture and cheese making. Currently, I work as a part-time dairy farmer and cheese maker, design researcher and am active as board member of Toekomstboeren.

Contact

Cananis Fermento 4

  • General information
  • Year
    2017 – 2019
  • Team
    Andrea Gilly, Chris Holtslag, Lilli Linkola
  • Partners
    Waste2Taste, Ravintola Loop
  • Location
    Helsinki
  • Status
    Ongoing

Cananis Fermento is a food waste preservation club that aims to reduce food waste by (re)learning, sharing and teaching different food preservation techniques.

The initial idea

Cananis Fermento was formed in 2017 in Helsinki by a group of students, entrepreneurs and others active in the local food scene after meeting in a local circular economy festival where waste food was a major topic. While participating in this festival, we discussed the need for more local initiatives in which people can learn how to preserve food in a sustainable way, as a response to the food waste, and as a way to get acquainted with the food system. That is why we decided to take matters into our own hands and came together to form a local food preservation club.

Goals

The goal of Cananis Fermento is threefold: on the one hand, we aim to experiment with informal and collective ways in which people can participate in the local food system, on the other hand we focus on reducing waste food and closing the loops within Helsinki’s food distribution system, thirdly we aim at (re)learning food preservation techniques with a low-energy impact. Although we draw inspiration from traditional food preservation techniques, we do not try to bring back the old. Instead, Cananis Fermento aims to develop new ways of storing food by sharing preservation techniques from different cultures and combining traditional knowledge with contemporary insights.

Preservation cafe’s

The main activity of Cananis Fermento is centred around our ‘Preservation Cafe’: a monthly recurring event during which we preserve food waste collected from local supermarkets. During a preservation cafe a group of people work together to process several boxes of disregarded food. Because of the limited choice the box provides, the group is restricted in what they can do. As a result, the group has to work together, learn how to respond to immediate circumstances and trust their intuition.

Read more

If you like to learn more about Cananis Fermento, feel free to download this booklet containing a more extensive documentation of this project.

Booklet