Eating Architecture (review)

It is not an obvious subject, but once one has come to think about it, the combination is not surprising either: Food and shelter are as essential to the development of civilization as fiber and fuel. Cooking and building both imply the transformation of (raw) materials applying energy while following rules to reach a final result: a meal or an inhabitable space. Time scales may be different, but if there is anything like coherence in culture, both activities must have at least some symbolic, structural or metaphorical relationship. That is exactly what the authors of this collection of essays are exploring or proving.

Jamie Horwitz of Iowa State University and Paulette Singley of Woodbury University serve the meal in four courses. In "Place Settings," the connections between food and locale are explored. Each essay looks at food from a different angle: the locality or globality of its production, regional culinary identities, the "consumption" of the colonies and the international tourist taste. In "Philosophy in the Kitchen,"

the cleansing, cutting, and cooking of food form a routine that also doubles as a site for aesthetic experimentation. By drawing gastronomy out of the kitchen, the essays that follow shift the discussion toward the performative space of eating—a site that is inherently unstable, mutable, mobile and memorable (p. 16).

"Table Rules," with its striking reference to Claude Lévi-Strauss's magnum opus, The Origin of Table Manners, effectively honors the founding father of structuralist anthropology without copying his themes or imitating his approach. It is in these five contributions that the close connections between practical day-to-day architecture and interior design and the social and cultural meaning of food are analyzed. Watch out for "Food to Go: The Industrialisation of the Picnic," by Mikesch Muecke, when next victimized by a fast food giant or committing another takeaway. "Embodied Taste," finally, targets the taste buds and their counterparts in the other senses. This is where art and architecture meet gastronomy and food production. Of course, Georges Bataille and Damien Hirst must pass in revue, as do Dalí and Francis Bacon.

All in all, I found the essays in this collection of uneven quality, but almost all of them inspiring and certainly thought provoking. I found it difficult to stomach Donald Kunze's extravaganza on the Missing Guest, but Susan Herrington's cultural and culinary portrait of Canada is palatable, hilarious and wise. Daniel S. Friedman's "Cuisine and the Compass of Ornament: A Note on the Architecture of Babette's Feast" offers a grandiose reading of this intriguing film and is as clear and sparkling as a glass of spring water, and the closing essay by editor Paulette Singley made me think again of marble and pork and why I am not disgusted by either.