Abstract
This chapter presents a facsimile copy of the Recipe Book for Banqueting in Useless Buildings, produced by four participating students during the School of Re-Construction.
The facsimile is prefaced by an introduction describing the pedagogic approach adopted for the workshop, drawing on Andre Viljoen’s architectural design research and Inês Neto dos Santos’ arts practice, it explored the ways food systems, including urban agriculture, can be reintegrated into cities and food in its intertwined socio-political, cultural, and ecological dimensions.
The lived experience of the COVID pandemic provided the scenario for the workshop brief by assuming the demand for office buildings was declining due to home working and recognising the well-being benefits of access to nature and physical meeting as a by-product of the “lock down” experience.
The chapter describes how, working virtually in different cities, each student was asked to identify an office building in their locations of Rabat, Morocco; Bialystok, Poland; Kaunas, Lithuania; and Vienna, Austria. These buildings were imagined to be in one virtual city and students proceeded to categorise them as material banks and, at the same time, articulate their qualities and potentials. The structure of a recipe was used to think about building re-use and a session titled “Recipe for a building - repurposing spaces through repurposing recipes; food and gestures, context and narrative” looked critically at the construction of recipes (and buildings), while exploring written, spoken, gestural, and visual language surrounding food. After further discussion and exercises, students were asked to break away from instructional writing and bring together the two ‘spaces’ of food plus built environment starting with the expression ‘And then I saw …’
From this point onwards, architectural design was merged with cooking and conversation, imagining a repurposed building that accommodates spaces for agriculture, cooking, and eating.
The student’s Recipe Book for Banqueting in Useless Buildings that follows documents the design process, recipe writing, and banqueting.
The facsimile is prefaced by an introduction describing the pedagogic approach adopted for the workshop, drawing on Andre Viljoen’s architectural design research and Inês Neto dos Santos’ arts practice, it explored the ways food systems, including urban agriculture, can be reintegrated into cities and food in its intertwined socio-political, cultural, and ecological dimensions.
The lived experience of the COVID pandemic provided the scenario for the workshop brief by assuming the demand for office buildings was declining due to home working and recognising the well-being benefits of access to nature and physical meeting as a by-product of the “lock down” experience.
The chapter describes how, working virtually in different cities, each student was asked to identify an office building in their locations of Rabat, Morocco; Bialystok, Poland; Kaunas, Lithuania; and Vienna, Austria. These buildings were imagined to be in one virtual city and students proceeded to categorise them as material banks and, at the same time, articulate their qualities and potentials. The structure of a recipe was used to think about building re-use and a session titled “Recipe for a building - repurposing spaces through repurposing recipes; food and gestures, context and narrative” looked critically at the construction of recipes (and buildings), while exploring written, spoken, gestural, and visual language surrounding food. After further discussion and exercises, students were asked to break away from instructional writing and bring together the two ‘spaces’ of food plus built environment starting with the expression ‘And then I saw …’
From this point onwards, architectural design was merged with cooking and conversation, imagining a repurposed building that accommodates spaces for agriculture, cooking, and eating.
The student’s Recipe Book for Banqueting in Useless Buildings that follows documents the design process, recipe writing, and banqueting.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | The Pedagogies of Re-Use |
| Subtitle of host publication | The International School of Re-Construction |
| Editors | Duncan Baker-Brown, Graeme Brooker |
| Place of Publication | Oxford |
| Publisher | Routledge |
| Chapter | 7 |
| Pages | 115-140 |
| Number of pages | 26 |
| Edition | 1 |
| ISBN (Electronic) | 9781032665559 |
| ISBN (Print) | 9781032650623 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 17 Jul 2024 |
Keywords
- urban agriculture
- food systems
- sustinable architecture
- circular design
- arts based methods