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- Digesting Gastrotecture: A constellation of associations between
Architecture and Gastronomy
Authors: José Antonio Carrillo Andrada
Abstract: This fourth issue of the UNIVERSITY of Universities Scientific Journal, titled Gastrotecture, aims to achieve a broader understanding of the intertwined relationships between architecture and gastronomy, expand the limits of both disciplines and register the emergence of new practices supported by innovative and unconventional approaches from design and technology. Gastrotecture has invited academics, researchers, designers and students to contribute with their works that broadly converge architecture and gastronomy and openly understand their borders.
PubDate: 2022-12-23
- The human act of eating as the birth of the digital architecture
Authors: Joaquíin Alvado, Maria Luna Nobile, Sofia Aleixo, Mike Devereux
Abstract: A conversation between the Editorial Committee members
PubDate: 2022-12-23
- Edible, or the Architecture of Metabolism
Authors: Lydia Kallipoliti, Areti Markopoulou
Abstract: How can produce food, and be eaten away' How can we define the architecture of metabolism'EDIBLE seeks to reveal how architecture constructs, distributes, and leverages power via material upcycling, interspecies alliances, biopolitics and excremental processes. It maps and redraws the affinities of the built environment as a product of many forces, translated in the tensions between products and by-products, production, and consumption and, finally, creation and decomposition.
PubDate: 2022-12-23
- Can we eat Earth Buildings'
Authors: Lola Ben-Alon, Sharon Yavo Ayalon
Abstract: Earth-based materials (namely, mud or dirt architecture) have been used for over millennia and are still sheltering approximately a third of the world population. These materials are currently experiencing a new Renaissance with upscaled construction methods and digital fabrication technologies introduced by scientific literature that is highly focused on the mineralogical and particle characterization of optimal mixtures. Similarly, clay-based materials have been traditionally used as edible substances in almost every global region: from the Middle East to India, and from Western Europe to the Caribbeans and Africa. Traditional recipes such as bonbon tè (Haitian mud cookies) and the Calabash Chalk (West Africa) have been used as part of human diet for religious beliefs, traditional local medicine, or as part of a regular menu. Studies in the field of edible clay have shown that pregnant women crave dirt, clay, or charcoal if their bodies are deficient in key minerals, a custom that has been interpreted by Western investigators as a pathology named Geophagia. This paper presents an empirical and experimental investigation into the mineralogical content within earth materials and its role in building and human metabolism. A critical literature review of earth materials and their particle mineral content is presented, while analyzing, comparing, and contrasting the ingredients that make a good buildable and edible earth artifact. The analysis in this study reveals that both buildable and edible soil compositions share a common mineralogical base: the microstructure and water sorption capacity of clay minerals. As a final demonstration, this paper presents an architectural installation that maps earth artifacts for their buildability and edible possibilities. This paper critically contributes to the scientific architectural field by provoking questions regarding the mutual dependencies between humans and their surrounding natural resources, while testing ideas and beliefs regarding the nature-culture divide that governs existing environmental paradigms.
PubDate: 2022-12-23
- Architecture for Fermentation and vice versa.
Authors: José de la Rosa Morón
Abstract: The climate change and the consequent rising temperatures are evident, and solutions that respect the environment, the society and economy are needed. Human population has raised until a point in which those solutions were designed to place humans in first position. A demonstration of this fact lies on our own home designs, they have been improved by knowledge donations from many disciplines, between them, architecture. Several passive-cooling techniques comes from this discipline and might help to enrich the portfolio of some others that will be affected by the same issue of temperatures. Fermentation is an ancient technique that has evolved until our days, and it means approximately 1/3 of our culinary diversity. Fermentation, like architecture, relies on the design of semi-isolated environments that facilitates certain kind of life: microscopic, macroscopic or both. Assuming that the rising temperatures affects the stability of life, same rising-temperatures’ challenge is shared by both architecture and fermentation and the cross-contamination of passive cooling techniques in a multi, inter and even transdisciplinary way might create new solutions for both and many other disciplines. To this end, this review proposes as a hypothetical experimental model, the Iberian pork slaughterhouse, a space designed to host both human and microbial life, and which will therefore also be affected by the increase in temperature. Future studies are therefore proposed to test the hypotheses put forward in this review.
PubDate: 2022-12-23
- From being Consumers to becoming Producers: DESIGNING CYCLES at 64°
Authors: Cornelia Redeker, Sara Thor, Constanze Hirt
Abstract: In the sub-arctic climate with its extremely short growing seasons and a land cover that is dominated by forest and very little agricultural land, the built-up area offers an untapped capacity when thinking about sites for food production. This accounts both for the existing and, given the dynamics of Northern Sweden in terms of development and population growth, the forthcoming building stock. Designing Cycles at 64° takes a multi-scalar approach addressing individual building typologies and, exemplarily for climate adaptation of northern climate zones, the city of Umeå, Sweden with its diverse urban fabric as a whole. Expanding on Bengt Warne’s Naturhus (1974) and following examples, we anticipate new multifunctional architectural models applicable in various contexts and scales (see fig. 2). It further builds on the hypothesis that low-tech, low-cost landscape-based solutions are applicable in different societal contexts and therefore potentially contribute to overcoming segregation (Redeker, Jüttner, 2020).At 64° latitude, interior landscapes and their water-energy-food nexus offer interesting possibilities to extend growing seasons and diversify crops, to reduce energy consumption while providing hybrid living spaces between inside and outside. By exploring greenhouse extensions and building envelopes (GEEs) as local passive architectural solutions, DC64° sets out to build productive interfaces between the private and public sector, academia involving the disciplines of architecture and urban planning, urban water management, plant physiology and vertical gardening, as well as the general public in a living lab format. In this text we want to reflect on phase 0 of a living lab set up, reflect on the idea of a new vernacular for local food production in the sub-arctic and the context that defines this adaptive process and elaborate the outline of the methodology to be applied.
PubDate: 2022-12-23
- The form of taste
Authors: Charles Spence
Abstract: A growing body of experimental research now demonstrates that neurologically-normal individuals associate different taste qualities with design features such as curvature, symmetry, orientation, texture, and spatial location. In fact, the form of everything from the food itself through to the curvature of the plateware on which it happens to be served, and from glassware to typeface, not to mention the shapes of/on food product packaging have all been shown to influence people’s taste expectations, and, on occasion, also their taste/food experiences. At the same time, however, curvature in small and larger-scale architectural forms (such as furniture, and the internal layout of the servicescape) is also associated with preference and approach motivation and may thus potentially be used to bias, or nudge, the food behaviour (and choices) of consumers. Although the origins of shape-taste and other form-taste crossmodal correspondences have yet to be fully elucidated, that has not prevented a growing number of designers (including typeface designers, plateware manufacturers/potters), marketers, advertisers, and chefs, from starting to incorporate the emerging insights concerning these various, and seemingly ubiquitous, affinities between form and taste as a source of inspiration for their creative practice.
PubDate: 2022-12-23
- Building bridges: A transdisciplinary view on gastronomy
Authors: Juan Carlos Arboleya
Abstract: What happens when a food scientist and a sociologist have a conversation about their disciplines and they try to find ways of a real collaboration' What happens when they find a common place to do it' What happens when that common place is Gastronomy'This dialogue between a food scientist and a sociologist try to point out the difficulties and the benefits of such an integration. A transdisciplinary approach is discussed through the whole conversation.
PubDate: 2022-12-23
- Food as a City Masterplan: Three Visions
Authors: Martí Guixé
Abstract: In June 2021, LaPlasita organized a conference titled “Ciudades Alimentadas” (Fed Cities) Seville. My presentation there consisted of proposing three hypotheses for designing a city using a diet as an agent of urban and social planning.The title: Food as a City MasterplanThe three diets were analyzed and referenced against my Food Design projects, and ultimately, I presented a scenario that described how these systems could alter the city on both an urban and social level.Of the three diets described, I was personally most drawn to the third – which proposed that through the elimination of agriculture the city would become a platform for relationships and events, with food, the edible object, liberated from the act of cooking and from the traditional accoutrements of eating: dining rooms, food storage, all the usual necessities. This proposal was the most speculative I presented.The second proposal was the most realistic and consisted of uniting organic farming with the new collaborative economy systems managed by DAO, blockchain and tokens. This created a visualization of how large-scale organic gardens might be managed.This text, written after the fact, aims to provide an overview of all three proposals with a particular practical focus on the second, that of growing crops on the urban periphery, which I call "Extrarradio Jumbo Gardening"
PubDate: 2022-12-23
- Junk Food
Authors: Miguel Luengo Angulo
Abstract: The construction of a shelter and to eat are part of the reduced group of basic needs, those that we cannot do without but that willingly accept improvements that oscillate between the cultural, the social, the aesthetic or the political. The result of these updates will give rise to architecture and gastronomy respectively.One of the most fascinating tandems between gastronomy and architecture, due to its literalness and immediacy, was provided by the radical group Street Farmer with the Eco-House designed and built by Grahame Caine in London in 1972. The house, understood as an active laboratory during the more than two years it lived, materialized the anarcho-ecological ideas of a group of architects who trusted in the reformist and emancipatory capacity of an architecture detached from the dominant technophile circles at the time in the Architectural Association. La construcción del refugio y comer forman parte del reducido grupo de necesidades básicas, aquellas de las que no podemos prescindir pero que aceptan con gusto mejoras que oscilan entre lo cultural, lo social, lo estético o lo político. El resultado de estas actualizaciones dará lugar a la arquitectura y la gastronomía respectivamente.
Uno de los tándems más fascinantes entre gastronomía y arquitectura, por su literalidad e inmediatez, lo aportó el grupo radical Street Farmer con la Eco-House diseñada y construida por Grahame Caine en Londres en 1972. La casa, entendida como un laboratorio activo durante los más de dos años que "vivió", materializó en la Architectural Association las ideas anarcoecológicas de un grupo de arquitectos que confiaron en la capacidad reformista y emancipadora de una arquitectura desligada de los círculos tecnófilos dominantes del momento.
PubDate: 2022-12-23
- RootSkin - from soil to soil
Authors: Chiara Farinea, Fiona Demeur, Andrea Conserva
Abstract: Food and architecture have always been intertwined. When humans started to build settlements, we began to dictate where the food would be grown. Simultaneously, natural resources such as water, light and nutrients dictate how a plant grows. When a climbing plant or vines are planted, humans begin to plan the route for the plant to grow, forcing it to take on certain forms. Is it possible to control the plant below the soil as it is above the soil' Plant roots seek out and grow towards the water source, posing the possibility to control the network roots that are often hidden deep within the soil.
Today architects are working with nature to create architecture that is both responsive and harmonious with nature. As resources, in particular land, become increasingly scarce and our human population continues to grow, we have to find new solutions for food production and housing. Our cities provide us with new opportunities to reshape the urban fabric while responding to our current issues. While plants provide food, they can also potentially provide other resources that could be used in architectural applications.
Plants already provide us with many benefits such as food, medicine, cleaning the air to name but a few. Often, once the fruit is removed and the plant no longer fruits, the plant is removed from the soil and discarded - hopefully composted. This poses the question, is it possible to simultaneously harvest other elements of the plants and make use of them before the element biodegrades and ends up back in the soil' RootSkin is a research developed to explore the creation of biodegradable textiles made from the roots of plants as well as producing food during the “growth” of the textile. The aim being that these textiles can then form part of architectural installations such as skins for pavilions or buildings, to name an example. In addition, the natural biodegradation allows for an element of change to be incorporated into design.
PubDate: 2022-12-23
- THE DISORDER OF THE DINING TABLE
Authors: Sarah Wigglesworth
Abstract: Spatial practice should be about celebrating these acts of creativity, embracing unpredicted events and laying out possibilities for imagination. Instead of closing these down, we want to embrace such potential creativity, inviting people to explore space and place in unexpected ways.
PubDate: 2022-12-23
- VIRTUAL PHENOMENOLOGY: A Critical Essay about the Relationship between
Virtual Environments and the Senses
Authors: Georges Kachaamy
Abstract: Keywords: Immersive, Virtual, Phenomenology, Senses, Gustatory. This article focuses on the content, process, and outcome of the design brief titled virtual phenomenology under the professional elective course DDFT 473 – Virtual Environments. The emphasis of the course tackled the relationship between the virtual realm and the senses using virtual reality HMD and controllers as tools allowing students the possibilities to create virtual spaces inside virtual reality. Students spent more than 50 hours inside the virtual void trying to correlate and ignite specific senses in relation to each created virtual space. Despite the tremendous researches related to immersive education, this article attempts to showcase the process and outcome within the framework of VR Sketch application and how the usage of VR technology affect and empower the creation of virtual spaces through the senses rather than focusing on a traditional 2D iterative method of creating architectural spaces.
PubDate: 2022-12-23
- The Blur Table
Authors: Elin Werme Oscarsson
Abstract: The social distancing of the Covid-19 pandemic challenged the performance of the home. A blurry tangle of states of minds was left on the dinner table when the spatial transitions between private and public activities suddenly disappeared. Myriads of formal and informal activities could be conducted from the same spot, often with the computer as tool. Today, most of us are back in our physical facilities, but traces from the pandemic are left in the way we work. This project investigates the relation between virtual space, physical objects, and the user in a domestic context. Rather than improving the home and its interior, the project suggests ways of working with the virtual from an architectural point of view. The space-investigating tools of the architect are used not to illustrate thought, but to constitute thought. By intersecting the findings on the virtual with the social act of the meal, the virtual can be elevated to the experience of the virtual. The meal continues as a central force of activation and tension throughout the project. The notions explored in the project are synthesised in The Blur Table: the borderless furniture.
PubDate: 2022-12-23
- Food for Atlas
Authors: José Antonio Carrillo Andrada, Miguel Luengo Angulo, Jose de la Rosa Morón
Abstract: This Atlas section shows the work that undergraduate and master's degree students have produced in three workshops where the relationship between architecture and gastronomy, same as the call of this issue# 4 Gastrotecture, has been the central theme, the cultural diversifier and nexus of unity among participating students.
The first two workshops are part of the UoU network. Students of the Digital Design and Fabrication course in Architecture at the American University in Dubai joined this European teaching project. They participated in the workshop Architecture & Food: An International Buffet in September 2020 and the 2043 A Dinner with Churchill in the Metaverse workshop in February 2022. The workshops lasted two weeks and were online. The third and last workshop presented here is entitled Bigamies for gastronomy and was held face-to-face during the International Seminar and Workshop on Transdisciplinary Knowledge Transfer in the Basque Culinary Center, Donostia-San Sebastián, Spain, on March 2022. The students of the Master in Gastronomic Sciences, unlike UoU architecture students, have a background closer to gastronomy and far from architecture. Among them are graduates in pharmacy, biotechnology, chemical engineering, cooking, food technology, nutrition and dietetics, and advertising, to name a few. In addition, their places of origin are the USA, Colombia, Peru, India or China.
PubDate: 2022-12-23
- UOU4EUROPE Project. A Teaching Model for the UNIVERSITY of EUROPE
Authors: Javier Sánchez Merina
Abstract: Letter from the Director
PubDate: 2022-12-22
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