A Table made of Watercress: An understanding of atmosphere and gastronomy

Abstract

"The pleasure of dining radiates outward from the alimentary tract to encompass impressions of the food, table, room and the larger context… the cuisine and place conspire to intensify sensual experience, to consolidate and to elicit memories, to satisfy curiosity". (Anderson 248)

The well-situated meal, as described above by Alex T. Anderson, establishes the intention for this design lead research. To intensify sensual experience, rouse memory and appease curiosity this research responds to Anderson’s call for the design of place to balance the creation of the chef (248). These sensual qualities can also be identified in Peter Zumthor’s poignant architectural spaces and writing on atmosphere. The research explores Zumthor’s nine principles of atmosphere as tools to inoculate the well-situated meal with layers of design integration able to seduce and intensify atmosphere.

Anderson’s characterisation of the well-situated meal equally defines the scope of site, developing through increasing scales to embrace the plate, table surface, table and chair and full interior architectural intervention as manifestations of the well-situated meal. Through these increasing scales cuisine and place are directly consolidated through the application of theory surrounding gastronomic analogy. Writing on this position is diverse therefore the approach develops three strategies; the sensory interaction of eating, the procession of courses within a degustation and a cuisines characteristic terroir.

The sensory interaction of eating will be the first gastronomic strategy, used to induce sensory interaction within the plate as sensual experience. Secondly the procession of courses within a degustation will be translated into a procession of dining spaces traversed in parallel to the courses. The final and most provocative strategy will consider terroir [ter-wahr], the French noun used to describe the unique qualities found in food or wine attributed to the environment it is grown or created within. This idea will be inverted to create a space manifested as terroir of the cuisine as a basis to translate gastronomy into space.

The final design outcomes play on sensual experience, curiosity and seduction to create an alternative dining experience seeping atmosphere whilst drawing on cuisine to create space which participates in Anderson’s well-situated meal.