Gabriela Aquije Zegarra

MAKE/SENSE P.h.D candidate.
Researcher at IXDM

Gabriela Aquije Zegarra (Lima, 1990) is a gardener, cook, and Peruvian architect focused on the social, spatial and ecological relationships within food pathways. She has grounded and nurtured her practice through collaborations with land-based and creative practitioners, as well as agricultural communities mainly in Peru, Germany, and Switzerland.

As a researcher and educator at the Institute Experimental Design and Media Cultures (IXDM), in Basel Academy of Art and Design FHNW (HGK), she works and experiments at the intersection of critical design pedagogies, agroecological urbanism and situated food practices, from seed to pot and back to the soil. Inspired by the legacy of community kitchens, food sovereignty, and peasant movements, she challenges her land-scape design practice through reciprocity-economy rehearsals in gemeinschaftsgartens’ (community gardens) seasonal labors, and through anti-oppressive joys of collective cooking workshops or events.

Currently at the MAKE/SENSE program, she’s documenting and translating this practice in a recipe book and living archive to share her PhD project “Culinary Return”. As well, she’s part of the SNSF – SPIRIT project “Nurturing Inter-structures / Inter-estructuras de Cuidado y Nutricion”, a transnational research between the IXDM, ETH-CARE and FUBU, in Switzerland, and PUCP-CIAC, CONAMOVIDI and CHIRAPAQ, in Peru.

https://criticalmedialab.ch/people/gabriela-aquije-zegarra/

2025-Ongoing

Researcher at SNSF-SPIRIT “Nurturing Inter-structures”
Basel/Zurich, Switzerland
Lima, Peru
https://irf.fhnw.ch/entities/project/59c5efbc-af35-43cb-9a81-35b787eec2e3

2025 – ongoing

Food Researcher at KOMA culture studio
Basel/Zurich, Switzerland
https://www.instagram.com/p/DMK2RfYs_2z/?img_index=7

2022 – ongoing

Gardener at gemeinschaftsgarten Landhof
Basel, Switzerland
https://www.gemeinschaftsgarten-landhof.ch/

2021 – ongoing

Culinary Return, PhD project
MAKE/SENSE program
Basel Academy of Art and Design FHNW and
the University of Art and Design in Linz
https://makesensephd.ch/#/project?id=17

2021 – 2025

Project Manager at HGK FoodCultureLab
Basel, Switzerland
https://www.fhnw.ch/en/about-fhnw/schools/academy-of-art-and-design/institute-art-and-design-education/food-culture-lab

2021 - 2024

Co-founder of Cocinas Alterinas
Basel/Zurich, Switzerland
https://www.cocinasalterinas.com/

2021

Researcher and Project Manager Visualizing the Virus
Remote, UK, Germany and Switzerland
https://visualizingthevirus.com/

2019 - 2021

Blogger and Researcher for Roots Radicals Berlin
Berlin, Germany
https://rootsradicals.berlin

Cook at Küfa Dessau
Gardener at Vor-ort
Dessau-Rosslau, Germany
https://www.dessau-vorort.de/kuefa/

COCINAS ALTERINAS
Basel/Zurich, Switzerland
A collaborative project with the swiss-egyptian designer Mayar El Bakry, that explores food as a means to reflect and meditate on plural visions of design.
https://www.cocinasalterinas.com/ 

2019 – 2020

On Food, MSc. Design Research Project
COOP program of the Bauhaus Foundation Dessau, Anhalt University of Applied Sciences, and Humboldt University of Berlin
https://coopdesignresearch.de/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Gabriela-Aquije-Zegarra_210129.pdf

2025

PLANT_INTELLIGENCE
Learning Like a Plant – Symposium
RE-ROOTED, a curated dinner and performative input with KOMA Culture Studio

MAKE/SENSE ASSEMBLY
Participant and Co-host “Practice-based Forms of Reading and Writing”
(Basel, Switzerland)

FOOD CULTURE DAYS - Biennale
Under the same sun: Cuando el Maiz nos Unio
Research and co-hosting with KOMA Culture Studio
(Vevey, Switzerland)

LA SANGRE DEL RIO
Das Blut des Flusses: Mining and Resitance in Espinar
Co-host and moderator or the film screening and dialogue with Vidal Merma
Critical Media Lab
(Basel, Switzerland)

2024

MESH FESTIVAL
Imagination as a Site of Struggle
Panelist with Lilo Viehweg and Guillemette Legrand

EASST-4S 2024 AMSTERDAM
Making and Doing Transformations
“Staying with the struggle: Possibility, contingency and failure in three speculative more-than-human worldings that attempt to speak-with”, Panelist with Kit Braybrooke, Viktor Bedö and Ruth Catlow
(Amsterdam, Netherlands)

SWISS SUMMER SCHOOL
Food with/out Nature
Performative presentation “Every Seed has a recipe” and the Culinary Return living archive
(Basel, Switzerland)

FROM THE FIELD TO PAPER AND BACK
In conversation with Marisol de la Cadena
With MAKE/SENSE colleagues at Critical Media Lab
(Basel, Switzerland)

2023

A DECOLONIZED & DECARBONIZED DINNER PARTY SYMPOSIUM
The New School, Parsons School of Design, online international symposium, as part of Cocinas Alterinas
(New York, US- Online)

COMMON HOUSEHOLD: LIVING, EATING AND CARING IN THE CITY
Symposium Architekturzentrum Wien.
Panelist “Cooking with the Landscape: collective cooking and gardening in Peru and Switzerland”
(Vienna, Austria)

„DAS MENSCHLICHE HABITAT“
Participant in the podium discussion in the context of the Examensausstellung der Kunsthochschule Kassel "EXAMEN2023 Teilchen/Examen/Gezeiten"
(Kassel, Germany)

CLIMATE CARE FESTIVAL
Critterkratia – Floating Berlin
Harvest Moon Dinner, with Monica Kisic

2022

GROUNDINGS
Conference organized by Linnaeus University, University of Edinburgh & University of Amsterdam and the HGK IXDM.
“Culinary Return: Crafting Slow Disturbances from Chacra (farm) to Kitchen”
(Växjö, Sweden)

2021

FUTURE ARCHITECTURE CEx-2021
New Politics Session
Landscapes of Care Creative Exchange - European Architecture Program
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnANMuNNGxQ&list=PLASEP3F7V0ewbP67HIeej1zIvsqojww4P&index=36&ab_channel=FutureArchitecture

BAUHAUS STIFTUNG
Bauhaus Study Rooms “Infrastructure”
Speaker at “Conversations shape our tomorrow“, moderated by Michael Hohl, and together with Brigitte Hartwig

2020

BAUHAUS STIFTUNG
Bauhaus Study Rooms “Habitat”
- Speaker for the Co Habitation round table, moderated by Dr. Sria Chartejee
- Artist at the performatic cooking- workshop “Bauhaus, are you boiled enough?”, together with the artist Elias Kurt.

REMOTE PRACTICES
Architecture in Proximity Symposium – Online
National University of Singapore and The University of Sydney
Speaker at Session 2 / Design Research

CFC – CREATIVE FOOD CYCLES
International Symposium - Online
Speaker at Genius Session: Food Cycles Transversal Inputs
Leibniz Universität Hannover, Institute of Advanced Architecture of Catalonia and Università degli Studi di Genova