The Architect, the Cook and Good Taste

158 Pages·2007·12.44 MB·English

by  Petra Hagen Hodgson

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The Architect, the Cook and Good Taste

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Petra Hagen Hodgson
Rolf Toyka
The Architect, the Cook and Good Taste
On behalf of the Academy of the Hesse Chamber of Architects
and Town Planners
Birkhäuser
Basel · Boston · Berlin
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This book has been kindly supported by Gaggenau BSH Appliances Ltd.
Concept and Copy Editing
Petra Hagen Hodgson, Königstein (supervision)
Rolf Toyka, Wiesbaden
Translation
Michael Robinson, London
(other than the contributions of Peter Davey, Ian Ritchie and Claudio Silvestrin)
Graphic Design
Studio Joachim Mildner, Düsseldorf / Zürich
Lithography
farbo Print + Media, Cologne
This book is also available in a German language edition:
ISBN-13: 978-3-7643-7331-3
ISBN-10: 3-7643-7331-8
Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie;
detailed bibliographic data is available in the Internet at <http://dnb.ddb.de>.
Library of Congress Control Number:2007922265
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically
the rights of translation, reprinting, re-use of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in other
ways, and storage in data banks. For any kind of use, permission of the copyright owner must be obtained.
©2007 Birkhäuser Verlag AG
Basel · Boston · Berlin
P.O.Box 133, CH-4010 Basel, Switzerland
Part of Springer Science+Business Media
Printed on acid-free paper produced from chlorine-free pulp. TCF (cid:39)
Printed in Germany
ISBN-13: 978-3-7643-7621-5
ISBN-10: 3-7643-7621-X
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
www.birkhauser.ch
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Contents
6 Foreword 94 The Eater and his Ancestors
Barbara Ettinger-Brinckmann/Rolf Toyka Andreas Hartmann
8 Introduction 100 Hearth and Home
Petra Hagen Hodgson Food Preparation Locations in Changing Times
Peter Davey
14 Architecture and Food Composition
Peter Kubelka 110 From Pot au Feu to Processed Food
The Restaurant as a Modernist Location
22 Measurement and Number in Architecture Wilhelm Klauser
Paul von Naredi-Rainer
120 The Globalisation of Taste
30 Measurements in Cooking Udo Pollmer
Renate Breuß
124 Architectural Essentials
38 Materials and Colours Claudio Silvestrin
Annette Gigon in Conversation with Petra Hagen Hodgson
128 The Order of Courses
50 The Homely Hearth A Theatrically Composed Structure
Building and Living, Eating and Drinking, Considered in Onno Faller
Terms of Architectural Theory
Fritz Neumeyer 138 Slow Food
Carlo Petrini
60 Rules of Fasting and Desire Derailed
Notes on Architecture and Gastronomy 142 A Visit to Raymond Blanc at Le Manoiror
Stanislaus von Moos A Culinary and Architectural Gesamtkunstwerk
Petra Hagen Hodgson
72 The Reproducibility of Taste
Ákos Moravánszky 146 The Cuisine of Making Shelter
Ian Ritchie
82 Meaningful Architecture in a Globalised World
Gion Caminada 152 Biographies
156 Illustration Credits
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Foreword
Barbara Ettinger-Brinckmann/Rolf Toyka
Tradition means handing on the fire, not worshipping the ashes
(Gustav Mahler)
Just as the contents of our refrigerators are an image of globalisation, the architectural garb of the built environment all over the
world is becoming increasingly uniform. But is product quality keeping up with this? One bad piece of cooking means one bad
meal – so long as there is no damage to health with devastating consequences. But buildings last longer, shaping the place we
live in, our villages, towns and regions, over the centuries. So the quality of the built environment is all the more important,
and not just functionally and structurally, but aesthetically as well. There have been many complaints about our “inhospitable
cities.” It all starts with a single badly designed building. Architecture represents an important part of our culture. The Hesse
Chamber of Architects and Town Planners and the academy attached to it have been campaigning for a greater awareness of
quality for years, and constantly stress that the act of building must of course consider commercial and functional require-
ments, but above all it has to make a contribution to building culture.
Knowledge and sensitivity are needed if quality is to be insisted upon. We live in a highly specialised world. It calls for joined-
up thinking and intellectual exchange between different disciplines to arrive at new viewpoints. So for ten years now the basic
6 work of the Hesse Chamber of Architects and Town Planners has included addressing interfaces with other culture spheres
intensively. Subjects included “architecture and music,” “architecture and literature,” “architecture and film” and “architecture
and theatre.” So the idea for this book has its origins in an interdisciplinary symposium on “architecture and culinary culture”
organised by the academy of the Hesse Chamber of Architects and Town Planners in cooperation with the Deutsches
Architekturmuseum, under the direction of Petra Hagen Hodgson and Rolf Toyka.
This revealed fundamental links and parallels between the two art forms. These first
insights gained at the symposium have been condensed into this volume of texts,
now with additional, more detailed lines of thought.
Why is it that the subject of links between architecture and cooking should seem
particularly worth studying? Both arts are essential “staffs of life.” If we start addres-
sing the question of quality, then in the case of both cooking and building we see
that quality does not have to be associated with high costs. On the contrary, it is
about devising intelligent, creative solutions using basic ingredients or materials –
and these can be very simple. Some critics have asked in the context of the sym-
posium whether there are not more urgent problems than pursuing ideas about
building and cooking. There is no doubt that the current economic situation has to
be seen as difficult. But this does not make cultural demands – whether they are
aesthetic or ethical – any less significant. On the contrary, if efficiency is the only
Cooking lab goal considered, along with cost and questions of short-term gain, there is a danger
that we shall lose culture altogether. It is much more that it is a special challenge to
aspire, committedly and creatively, to cultural achievements that “pay” in the long term, despite constraining circumstances.
True art is not exclusive or elitist, one of its values includes “moderation” – in the way we treat our resources, our space, our
aesthetic means. Today things that are fashionable, shrill and exalted tend to be unduly highly rated in architecture, in order to
stand out from the masses. Juhani Pallasmaa had some hard words to say about the general trend towards this ego-related
architecture at the symposium on “architecture and perception” in Frankfurt am Main (2002): “Most buildings that have been
praised in the international press in recent years are characterized by narcissism and nihilism. It is time for this hegemony of
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the visual to be broken at last in favour of re-sensualising, re-eroticising and re-enchanting the world. Here architecture has the
role of restoring the inner world. Instead of experiencing the fact that we are here in the world through architectural space,
architecture has deteriorated into the art of the printed image, and has lost its three-dimensional and material quality.”
Moderation does not mean hankering after publicity and fame, but suggests a carefully considered approach to a given task on
the basis of the matter in hand; it means concentrating on essentials. This also includes being aware of tradition and history in
particular. Innovative solutions – as in cooking – based on background knowledge are equally desirable for architecture and
urban development, landscape architecture and interior design. It is also a matter of making the general public more profound-
ly able to understand questions about their built environment. One of the many activities that the Chamber has arranged in this
context is the annual “Architecture Day.” Architecture today is far from most people’s everyday thinking and experience, and it
is for this reason that an approach to this broad topic is being promoted in schools in particular, under the heading Architektur
macht Schule– “architecture goes to school” or “architecture becomes the accepted thing.” So the Chamber does not simply
mount isolated campaigns, but is also responsible for a variety of publications providing pupils and teachers with sound tea-
ching materials. It is important for young children to enjoy looking at their built environment and to acquire criteria and stan-
dards for judging architectural quality because today’s schoolchildren will be tomorrow’s clients and decision-makers, making
a considerable contribution (with us) to the shape of the world we live in. Once a sense of quality has been acquired it is pos-
sible to resist the above-mentioned architectural shift towards global uniformity, to work against architecture aiming solely at
short-term gain and against the compulsion to be spectacular. The Slow Food movement is doing this sort of work in the field
of cooking. It now has over 80,000 members world-wide, and is devoted above all to training the sense of taste, and it is also
proving successful as a counter-movement to Fast Food, seen as a synonym for Junk Food. In architecture, the efforts being
made by institutions including the Deutsches Architekturmuseum, the Architekturmuseumin Munich, the local architecture
centres and the BaukulturFoundation. If this book can give further impetus to strengthening a relevant movement for promo-
ting quality architecture with values, a great deal will have been achieved. What this book is not offering: magic solutions for
cooking and building. It is much more about passing on the fire Gustav Mahler was talking about – through a future-oriented
recollection of tradition.
7
Architecture workshop
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Introduction
Petra Hagen Hodgson
Halfway up the Sacro Monte, near to the town of Varese, was a simple little restaurant. It consisted of just one long, light room
with tables with white cloths and high wooden basketwork chairs. The room was built close by the mountainside, light poured
8 into the plain space through the wide-open French windows that made up the longitudinal façade of the building. These
French windows connected the room with the terrace, paved with weathered stones and surrounded by stone walls. Two fig
trees, lavender shrubs and rosemary bushes were growing on it, and there was a fine view of the Po plain. The owner carried
the tables out on to the terrace in fine weather. At Sunday lunchtime families got together here with uncle and aunt, grandma
and grandpa round one of the long tables and lingered over their meal until well into the afternoon. The owner was the cook
as well, and he often came over to the guests, keen to know how good the food was tasting – but essentially to share the
delight he took in his art. The food was always wonderful, even though it was comparatively simply prepared, using the tastiest
products of a particular season – spicy tomatoes, deep purple aubergines, fresh, fragrant herbs, the best olive oil, butter and
cream from the nearby dairy. The padronecooked and served as though all the guests were part of his family. Sometimes ever-
yone got together round one big table. Guests find that this feeling of human fellowship in an atmosphere defined by the warm-
hearted personality of the cook, as manifest in his delicious food, and by the modest but clear, natural spatial situation,
remains with them to this day. Many of them have regularly tried to find the same thing again – wherever they may have come
from – but have rarely come across anything as naturally right as this.
This book is devoted to exploring how architecture and cooking work together, and thus approaching the question of “good
taste”: building and cooking are two profoundly human activities with many points of contact. What is it that connects the art
of building with the art of cooking? What are the connections based on, and how are the assumed parallels between them
expressed? What conclusions can be drawn from a comparison? Above all: how do they actually contribute to our good humour
and well-being as human beings? Both building and cooking measure and consider proportion, they impose form and shape,
fit together and compose. Aesthetic categories like harmony, proportion and composition, which as a rule are attributed more
to architectural design, also apply to cooking. The use of the human body as a yardstick for harmonious proportions is com-
mon to both architecture and cuisine. Both are based on the materials i.e. the ingredients used. And more: what is the signifi-
cance of cooking and building for personal feelings and sensations? And beyond this: what part do they play for us human
beings living together? People create “memory archives.”1Our values, perceptions and (taste) sensations are crucially shaped
1Hartmann, Andreas at the by our memories of own personal life stories and the collective cultural experience buried deep in our memories of social ritu-
Deutsches Architekturmuseum
symposium about architecture and als in earlier days. Marcel Proust called it the “measurable edifice of memory”. Ritual, tradition and (taste) memory are part of
perception, November 21st and
22nd 2002 in Frankfurt am Main both building and cooking. How do they affect our thinking today? They are present for us – and not just through architectural
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tracts and cookery books. How do they affect our action? Architects work with the claim of being specialists in the human 2Cf. Heidegger, Martin: Bauen
Wohnen Denken. In: Otto Bartning
aspects of building and design. But cooking is seldom aware that social, psychological and aesthetic factors are part of their (ed): Mensch und Raum.
Darmstädter Gespräch 1951,
activities as well, and that they actively work on them every day. Cooking is able – just like architecture, to report precisely on
Darmstadt, 1951, pp. 72-84
a culture, a region or a person. So cooking does not just mean preparing appetizing food, but is a cultural activity on the same
3Ibid. p. 73
plane as architectural work – even though it is a more transient art as such.
4Flusser, Vilém quoted from: Botta,
Mario: Architektur und Gedächtnis.
Wege zur Architektur 2, Brakel,
We have Martin Heidegger to thank indirectly for shedding a key light on the essential connection between building and cook- 2005
ing, which happened when he was reflecting on the connection between building and living.2Starting with the common ety-
5Despite opinions to the contrary,
mological links between the two words in German, he shows that they can be viewed practically identically in the sense of the the meal prepared for the domestic
dining table is mainly still eaten
species-specific “being-on-earth” of us human beings. Put like this, building (bauen) includes tilling the earth (bebauen), the communally. Cf. Leimgruber,
Walter: Adieu Zmittag. In NZZ Folio
cultura, and creating buildings, both aspects of what was originally also contained in the term wohnen(living in the sense of pp.16-23, 6/2006
dwelling).Wohnenhad the additional semantic link with bleiben, “staying,” and “being pacified,” reflecting the aspect of local
or home roots. According to Heidegger, human building creates the place, and the place creates the room, the space in which
people live, their habitat. When he says “Bauen(…) is not only a means and a way to wohnen,bauenis itself already woh-
nen,”3it is then clear that that wohnenis more all-embracing, implying a basic human need, the need for one’s own centre, a
mid-point for one’s own world. Vilém Flusser characterises this need as follows: “We dwell. We could not live if we did not
dwell. We would be unhoused and unprotected. Exposed to a world without a centre. Our dwelling is the middle of the world.
We thrust out into the world from it, and then return to it. We challenge the world from our dwelling, and we take refuge from
the world in our dwelling. The world is the surroundings of our dwelling. It is our dwelling that fixes the world. Traffic between
dwelling and world is life.”4 These anthropological reflections by Heidegger and Flusser reveal the essential relationship of
building and cooking: the latter is one of the elemental cultural activities of dwelling that contribute to consolidating the human
“centre.” Where other than in the kitchen or at the dining table does family, social life crystallise most closely, thus contributing
to the emotional and social establishment of a human home or centre?5The ideas put forward in this book group themselves,
pictorially speaking, around this dining table – the laid table symbolising the “centre” of life.
9
Café-restaurant in Aachen