Eating Architecture

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.

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.