Eating Architecture - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0262083221 ISBN 13: 9780262083225

Publisher: Mit Pr, 2004

Synopsis

The contributors to this highly original collection of essays explore therelationship between food and architecture, asking what can be learned by examining the (oftenmetaphorical) intersection of the preparation of meals and the production of space. In a culturethat includes the Food Channel and the knife-juggling chefs of Benihana, food has become not only anobsession but an alternative art form. The nineteen essays and "Gallery of Recipes" in EatingArchitecture seize this moment to investigate how art and architecture engage issues of identity,ideology, conviviality, memory, and loss that cookery evokes. This is a book for all those who optfor the "combination platter" of cultural inquiry as well as for the readers of M. F. K. Fisher andRuth Reichl.The essays are organized into four sections that lead the reader from the landscape tothe kitchen, the table, and finally the mouth. The essays in "Place Settings" examine therelationships between food and location that arise in culinary colonialism and the global economy oftourism. "Philosophy in the Kitchen" traces the routines that create a site for aestheticexperimentation, including an examination of gingerbread houses as art, food, and architecturalspace. The essays in "Table Rules" consider the spatial and performative aspects of eating and theways in which shared meals are among the most perishable and preserved cultural artifacts. Finally,"Embodied Taste" considers the sensual apprehension of food and what it means to consume a work ofart. The "Gallery of Recipes" contains images by contemporary architects on the subject of eatingarchitecture.

About this title

About the Author

Yoshinori Amagai received an M.A. from the GraduateSchool of Art and Design, the University of Tsykuba,Japan. He is currently teaching and researching JapaneseArt and Design History at Akita city College of Arts andCrafts in Japan.

From the Inside Flap

"*Eating Architecture* is an immensely original and fascinating work. It brings together analyses of food and drink with materialities and design to produce a delightful feast." --John Urry, Department of Sociology, Lancaster University

"Carême threw down the gauntlet when he declared architecture the most noble of the arts and pastry the highest form of architecture. A century and half later, *Eating Architecture* picks up the gauntlet and runs to imaginative lengths in its exploration of the architectural aspects of food and the gastronomic aspects of architecture. An important and original contribution, full of delightful surprises." --Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, author of *Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums, and Heritage*

"Cooking, like architecture, manifests itself in building. The cook, like the architect, draws on an infinite array of creative resources which make it possible to create wonders from basic construction materials. But even using the finest marble or the best caviar, success is not guaranteed. Architecture, like cooking, evolves and lasts in the form of memories, tastes, and temperatures." --Ferran Adrià, El Bulli Restaurant, Barcelona

"Like the chef at a fusion grill, *Eating Architecture* revels in the eclectic, the diverse, even the idiosyncratic. The editors have wisely resisted the temptation to elicit homogeneity from their contributors, and the result is a collection of essays that truly sings -- a bold polyphony of distinct voices that jostle and flirt as they map, trace, and sculpt the interpenetrations of food and space. From the analytic to the anecdotal, from the incisive to the suggestive, the essays in *Eating Architecture* will both challenge and reward the curious reader." --Mark Morton, University of Winnipeg, author of *Cupboard Love: A Dictionary of Culinary Curiosities*

"This provocative anthology from an exceptionally diverse set of architects, philosophers, artists, and theoreticians provides something for everyone on the connections between food, eating, the body, and architecture. Studies range from farmers' markets and urban agriculture in Cuba to the role of food in an 18th century French narrative of seduction to etymological meditations on sarcophagi, Mies van der Rohe's design for a drive-in restaurant, and Salvador Dali's gastro-aesthetics." --Elizabeth Cromley, Department of Architecture, Northeastern University

"This book is a stately banquet with four menus containing intellectual dishes of increasing physical and conceptual depth. By contextualizing the production of food, architecture, and language within broader cultural, social, and economic forces, the essays give this book its academic breadth and a capacity to enrich a diverse readership. *Eating Architecture* can be savored in one long and indulgent session or in little tidbits with equal relish. It is easy to digest and if indigestion ensues, it is only due to the surfeit of its riches." --Katerina Ruedi Ray, Director, School of Art, Bowling Green State University

"Two essential and connective parts of our culture, food and architecture, are brought together in a serious and provocative fashion with *Eating Architecture*. If it wasn't clear before that the two rule the world, it will be now." --Michael Maltzan, architect

Reviews

These 20 inquisitive, sophisticated and offbeat essays explore the junctions between cookery and architecture, probing the unexpected links between the two art forms. They’re more numerous than one might imagine-as Phyllis Pray Bober reminds readers in the volume’s prologue, Antonin Careme, father of French cuisine, claimed, "Most noble of all the arts is architecture, and its greatest manifestation is the art of the pastry chef." Separated into four sections, "Place Settings," "Philosophy in the Kitchen," "Table Rules," and "Embodied Taste," these essays delve into colonialism, tourism, Canada and modern art, all examined through the twin lenses of food and form. Barbara L. Miller, who teaches art at Western Washington University, uses the theme of gingerbread houses to discuss, among other things, the spaces of 1950’s domesticity. Ferruccio Trabalzi, a Los Angeles urban planner, writes about the ways in which places like Napa Valley, the Champagne region and Tuscany have thrived commercially by protecting their original foodways and architecture. And Daniel S. Friedman, director of the Univ. of Illinois, Chicago’s architecture school, writes beautifully of the food-based cinematic masterpiece Babette’s Feast. The volume also includes a selection of weirdly lovely full-color images of food and food-related ideas as depicted by architects. While undeniably academic in tone-and tough going in spots-this book is also accessible and fascinating, a delicious tour through modern culture as experienced through the buildings we inhabit and the foods we eat.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Mit Pr
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0262083221
• ISBN 13: 9780262083225
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 373
• Editor: Horwitz Jamie, Singley Paulette