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Teaching a Taste for Architecture
Author(s): Margaret Mulcahy

Source: Building Material , 2020, No. 23, Fields (2020), pp. 53-76
Published by: Architectural Association of Ireland
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/26950724
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Margaret Mulcahy Research
Teaching a Taste for Architecture:

Introducing Architectural Design
Through the Analogy of Food Production
Learning architectural design is a life-long process1 that can

be daunting at first to new students. In a university design
studio setting, the notion of working across disciplines,
when one has barely begun to understand one’s own field,
may seem to add even more complexity to an already
complex task. However, we posit that being introduced
to a broad base of creative disciplines and practices can
ease students into architectural design, presenting them
with analogous aims, issues and processes that they are
already familiar with. To explore this pedagogical approach,
this paper presents a summary of the year one design
first semester studio programme at the Cork Centre for
Architectural Education, which for the last four years
(2015/16 – 2018/19) has included the development of core
skills alongside an exploration of ideas across and beyond
architectural design. In this programme, students interact
and collaborate with practitioners from architecture,
conservation, landscape architecture, theatre, the arts,
and in particular, food production.
Why link introductory architectural training with other

fields? Vitruvius asserted that ‘The architect should be
equipped with knowledge of many branches of study and
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varied kinds of learning’, reflecting the combination
of artistic and scientific knowledge which underpins an
understanding of ‘commodity, firmness and delight’.2
In our time, Terry Farrell recommended in his 2014 UK
review of architecture that students entering the design
professions should start from a broad foundation of
‘PLACE’ by studying Planning, Landscape, Architecture,
Conservation and Engineering, asserting that ‘with the ever-
changing and diversifying professions, this need for breadth
is dramatically increasing’.3
As future professionals, current students will be required

to work with colleagues and clients from a variety of allied
fields. They need to develop excellent communication,
creative synthesis, problem solving - and problem-
identifying - skills that they can continue to adapt and
apply in a rapidly changing world. As well as introducing
different built environment design fields from the outset,
as recommended by Farrell, the Cork year one programme
introduces the culinary arts as a creative practice linked
to architectural design. The similarities between food and
architecture are numerous: architecture and the culinary
arts came about in the same way through locally available
materials and knowledge, technologies, climate, cultural
and socio-economic conditions. Food and shelter are both
fundamental to survival; both are mediums that can reflect
social and individual values and tastes. Like cooking,
architecture is an art that ‘makes use of raw ingredients
and combines them [...] into a product greater than the sum
of the individual parts.’4
Food and architecture can both demonstrate hospitality

and social status. Constructing buildings bears many
similarities with constructing a meal, for example bread
making is often used as an analogy for making concrete5
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and bricks are baked. Since the publication of the AD issue
‘Food and the City’ in 2005,6 ‘fundamental’ relationships
between food and architecture have become a staple of
architectural discourse at different scales, from the table to
the city and beyond. Food has become a regular design topic
for architects and architecture students alike. For example,
in 2018 the Bartlett School of Architecture held a series of
cross-disciplinary events to debate ‘the vital moral, political,
social and urban issues behind feeding London and other
big cities’ as well as exploring relationships between taste,
physical surroundings and sensory experience.7 In Norway,
Fisker and Olsen’s projects with students explored how food
production and consumption is a sensory experience and a
social and performative act.8 Student-derived project briefs
with a focus on food can tackle important environmental
and social themes ranging from food security and mass
production (NUS, 2019),9 to local permaculture food
communities(DABE, 2017).10
As well as being thematically rich and complex, food

production and consumption is experienced, meaning
students can readily identify with it and practice learning by
doing. We are ‘cooked for’ as children; for students, the first
semester at university marks a transition from being ‘cooked
for’ toward cooking for oneself and others. In this way, in
addition to treating food as an advanced programmatic
theme in the design studio, introducing the culinary arts into
architectural education at an introductory stage – to take the
familiar ‘medium’ /process of food / cooking as an accessible
design analogy – offers a highly tangible and engaging means
of accessing key design issues and processes. It can also be
deliciously inspiring and fun! In the following sections we
present the Cork student programme, making use of the
structure of a typical menu to describe the progression of
student tasks from appetiser through to dessert.
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Appetisers and Entrée: Developing a Taste for Design
as Narrative and Performance
Students begin by undertaking short exercises relating
to ergonomics and the body in space, as well as making
‘lightbox’ set-pieces based on their own ideas of place,
narrative and memory. At this point they are not required
to design architecture. Instead, they are asked to explore
personal journeys, for example stories they are familiar
with or special places they choose as reference points, and
represent these through the abstract manipulation of light,
looking at both memory and light through a new perspective.
Next they transition from the wholly abstract space of

a lightbox to the tangible, but still ‘fictional’ narrative space
of urban theatre. Students may have previously performed
or designed, made and painted stage sets, written dialogue
or composed and played music in secondary school
or community project productions. The process of the
playwright and that of the architect is similar, as both start
with an imagined space which is subsequently realised.
The students work with Corcadorca, a local Irish Theatre
Company staging site specific theatre in Cork City and
Cork County. Site analysis, an awareness of context and
atmosphere are central to Corcadorca’s productions,
reminding us that creating meaningful places is not just
within the realm of the architect or the urban designer.
By generating concepts for a temporary stage set in Cork,
with Corcadorca as their live client, the students realise
that they are part of a dialogue, working towards design
for other disciplines, other uses and people. As one
student’s reflective statement attests, ‘It was interesting to
have a ‘non- architect’ reviewing our work as this taught us
that architecture is not just building but constructed space
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that satisfies a clients’ needs and wants.’ (Niamh Hurley
CCAE Year One 2017/18).
Main Course: Food as Concept -

Starting with Ingredients
Following on from the lightbox and temporary stage set
projects, students embark on the main project of the first
semester - a pavilion for food. The pavilion is situated as part
of the wider urban context of Cork city. It is intended
to exhibit food products and production and to reflect and/
or define the cultural identity of its setting.
Food in Cork is part of the local tradition and much talked

about. We start our investigations at the English Market in
the city centre, a familiar local institution where it is easy to
ask students to look at the best food, with clear provenance,
cooked with love, care and passion and to
take it from there. Students are asked to reflect on and
design for the best, in exactly the same way as Jonah Salk
sought out Louis Kahn to make manifest his work and
aspiration.11 They are asked to think about what food
represents to them personally, societally, environmentally,
socially, culturally and emotionally. They are asked to notice
food in literature, film, art, music and theatre. Students are
also asked to investigate the pragmatic - how and where is
food produced, grown, processed? How is it manipulated,
transported, prepared, presented, served, eaten and enjoyed.
Students independently work through place, memory and
narrative, from the scale of the personal and local out to
the scale of the global food system. Once this dialogue is
underway, activity then becomes centred around a ‘working’
kitchen that is set up in the studio itself by a freelance cook.
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Studio: Ivan’s Kitchen
How does a studio accommodate a ‘working’ kitchen’? The
studio has a table, we put it close enough to wall sockets
for power, and we have a sink at the end of the studio.
The rest comes in the boot of Ivan’s car – Ivan Whelan,
Food Consultant and Freelance Cook, former owner of
the Grapefruit Moon Restaurant, Ballycotton, Co. Cork.
Appliances requiring power include an oven, a two-ring
hob and a hand-held blender, bowls, a measure, chopping
board, cutlery, ingredients, cups and napkins are all brought
to the studio. Students help to bring everything in, and it is
all arranged on the table as directed by Ivan. Appliances are
plugged in and the studio becomes a kitchen. People bring
chairs around the table and the studio is a theatre with a
performer and an audience. Ivan sets out his plan of action,
the oven is on, the hob is on and the students and staff are
shown how to make a meal.
Culinary Performance and Space Requirements

Students observe at first hand the drama of cooking in a
space. The table provides surface for everything; preparing,
cooking and serving. The table is a stage for Ivan and the
food, the actor, all eyes are on the food - particularly once it
is ready for consumption. It proves to be quite a revelation to
the students that bread, soup and chorizo could be prepared
and cooked in such a small area. This radically changes
their outlook on how to put together spaces for activity and
appliances. As one student noted ‘The demonstration we
were given by Ivan I found very helpful, in that it definitely
encouraged me to make the service area as neat in size
as I did, having seen how little equipment and space one
could comfortably work in’ (Clare Creedon CCAE Year One
2016/17). They start to look at items placed, items in motion
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and the space needed for the person to perform. ‘...we were
lucky to have a demonstration...Ivan set up his own kitchen
in our studio, with all the appliances he needed. This gave
us the opportunity to learn how a small, portable kitchen
could work’ (Poppy Kilgallon CCAE Year One 2016/17).
Students realised that more than one activity can happen

in one place and vary depending on requirement. Students
know this, however it is often forgotten in the need to
provide for everything on a ‘list’, a project brief or set of
client requirements. The studio table became the servery,
as Laura noted ‘...we ate the bread and soup which Ivan
prepared for us while seated or standing, from cups and
with our hands.’ This changed how students thought about
how people would take the food away, where they might eat
it, how formal or informal seating might be, or whether they
would have tables, or use existing street furniture.
The influence of this experience can be seen in the students
design proposals, for example Laura’s work, who wrote:
‘Rather than including traditional seating around tables,
the type of food which I intended to be served in my pavilion
(which can also be held and eaten in the hands), gave me
the option to utilise a more informal dining setup. In order
to do this, I incorporated some seating into the pavilions
form, with the intention that customers could also use
the seating already present adjacent to the pavilion, or eat
while standing and chatting ’ (CCAE Laura Hurley Year One
2016/17). Laura’s proposal ‘was sited in a public space to
capture passing footfall by day and night and to act as a focal
point for interactions’ (especially to cater for those leaving
bars and clubs on the adjoining streets in the evenings and
during the night).
One pavilion design drew on the material copper - as it

is used in baking moulds. ‘Located on Coal Quay square,
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the form is influenced by three intersecting sight lines ....
The copper cladding is used to reference the historical
cake forms used in baking…’ (Artur Calyj CCAE Year One
1 2015/16). Anisha and Poppy both looked at bees, honey,
honey-combs and beehives. Anisha worked with the
structural form of a beehive as a basis for the form
of her pavilion whereas Poppy used the beehive form and
deconstructed it so as to highlight the plight of the bee
population and the subsequent consequences on the
environment. In doing the projects, the students brought
their own backgrounds and personal knowledge of
orchards, gardens, farms and greenhouses to the city centre.
Dessert: From Design to Tectonics

and Learning by Making
As well as informing the design brief for the pavilion,
Ivan’s cooking demonstration also provides a tangible
introduction to tectonics and the properties of building
materials. Soda bread is an apt choice of food for this. First,
it can represent an Irish ‘vernacular’. Second, its preparation
is perhaps more of an art than a science. The ingredients
consist of flour, buttermilk, salt, bread soda and always
your own participation in the making. Take a recipe, a
list of ingredients and associated weights and a method,
what do you need, how much of it, how do you use it?
Precise amounts of ingredients are combined in a defined
sequence and the result is dough. This dough is shaped into
a form and modified, i.e. cut with a knife so as to allow for
expansion, and put in an oven at a precise temperature for
a set time, high at first to allow it to rise and then lowered to
cook through. Once it is in the oven, you have relinquished
control. The dough is transformed. It expands, forms a ‘hard
surface’, changes colour, texture and taste, and becomes
structural, the process is ‘alchemic’. In the weeks following
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Ivan’s Kitchen, students were making concrete cubes and
testing these. Essentially this meant giving them ‘sand,
stone aggregate, cement, water and a shovel, ratios and
weights and put them to work!’ 12 The students observed
a direct correlation between the baking process and that
of making concrete blocks.
Ways of developing an architectural design concept may

be taught, or at the very least enabled, by use of analogy.
In this introduction to the architectural design process,
students are taken through a series of exercises to build
their understanding. First, they are engaged by creating
a specific thing – a lightbox based on personal narratives –
which invites them to look at the ‘everyday’ in a different
way and begin to abstract it. Next they expand their
exploration of narrative and place to an urban scale, whilst
also shifting their awareness from personal experience to
the range of user experiences and narratives that an urban
stage-set may respond to.
With their pavilion designs, students place food at the

centre of place, history, culture, economics, politics and
environment. Students are encouraged to ‘start with what
they know, question what they know, and find out more’ by
being directed to reflect on their own experiences as well
as linking these to wider metaphors, analogies and the
potential experiences of others.13 In short, students begin
to realise the relevance of their own experiences, knowledge
and interests in generating and developing ideas. Following
Ivan’s kitchen, students started cooking for each other,
they went home and looked at their kitchens, and discussed
nuances of the culinary arts with their parents and friends.
They measured plates, cups, space between worktops, and
how much space is needed to pass another behind a bar.
They went back to the English Market and looked at shelves,
61 Margaret Mulcahy
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storage and how these spaces are inhabited over a day.
They spoke to restaurateurs, visited sweet factories,
bakeries, charitable trusts including Penny Dinners and
asked how they might provide a space in the city for persons
without a home to cook and eat, and started a debate. They
asked and found answers to issues pertaining to fair trade,
food provenance, food history, food transport, and Cork
City’s long standing reliance on food and the environment.
By this point, the challenge of taking a kitchen from the
familiar domestic setting to a pavilion in the city appears
seamless. In short, they have started to be architects.
Central to an architect’s education must be learning how

to be curious and how to explore a design concept in order
to respond to social and spatial contexts. These exercises
are founded on the belief that architectural ideas are
derived from the phenomenal and the ephemeral through
understanding our environment, understanding context
and a rigorous investigation of what we see and how we see
it - not merely from a bolt of inspiration or the imitation
of a precedent. Students become aware of the adaptive
nature of space; a studio can become a theatre when there
is a performance, or a kitchen when we cook in it; likewise
an urban space can be a fairground when there is a carousel
and a market when the retailers come out into the street on
a Saturday. The semester emphasized working with people,
inhabiting a single space in a variety of ways and to simply
bring knowledge of the world that they will work and live in
into the studio, giving them a real flavour of and taste for
architecture.
(CCAE Year One, Semester One, Project 6, Design Studio

Collaborator Ivan Whelan, Food Consultant and Freelance
Cook, Shanagarry, Co. Cork )
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Fig 1
Proposed model for a ‘foundational year’ for

all built environment students to prepare
future designers for cross-disciplinary
collaboration and understanding.
63 Margaret Mulcahy
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Fig 2
Example of Lightbox, Laura Hurley CCAE

Year One 2016 17
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Fig 3 Fig 4
The English Market, website states: ‘...a civic Ivan cooking in the Year One Studio CCAE
space, a meeting place, a thoroughfare, and Copley Street November 2016 14.00 Ivan
a bustling social hub of the city’ makes soda bread and pea soup with
chorizo.
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Fig 5
Final Model, Food Pavilion Project Laura

Hurley CCAE Year One 2016/17
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Fig 6
Final Model, Food Pavilion Project Artur Calyj

CCAE Year One 2015/16
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Fig 7
Final Model, Food Pavillion

project CCAE Year One,
Anisha Yuhhi 2018/19.
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Fig 8
Final Model, Food Pavillion

project CCAE Year One,
Poppy Kilgallon 2016/17.
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Fig 9
Concept Model, Food Pavilion

Project made by Grainne Finnegan
CCAE Year One 2017/18
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Fig 10
From Concept to Design Resolution Aoife

O’ Connor CCAE Year One 2017/18. Aoife
investigated and developed further the ideas
posited around bread making and how a
bakery might represent the structure of
‘baked’ bread.
71 Margaret Mulcahy
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Fig 11
Final Model, Food Pavilion

Project Aoife O’ Connor
2017/19
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Fig 12
CIT Concrete Laboratory,

Year 1 Workshops,
November 2018
73 Margaret Mulcahy
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Notes
1 Architects Council of Europe, ACE 6 Franck, K., Food and the City: 75
Policy Position: The importance of (Architectural Design), John Wiley
life-long learning and the role of the & Sons, New Jersey, 2005.
profession in delivering continuing
7 University College London,
professional development (CPD),
Bartlett School of Architecture,
2016, http://www.ace-cae.eu/
Thinkspace: Food, 2018, http://
fileadmin/New_Upload/7._
www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/
Publications/Manifesto/EN/
architecture/events/2018/may/
ACE_MANIFESTO_4_THE_
thinkspace-food.
IMPORTANCE_OF_LIF E_2016_
EN.pdf (accessed 13 January 8 Fisker, A.M. and Olsen, T.
2019). D., ‘Food, Architecture and
Experience Design,’ Nordic
2 Vitruvius, The Ten Books on
Journal of Architectural Research,
Architecture, trans. Morris Hicky
20 (1), 2008. http://pdfs.
Morgan, Dover Publications, New
semanticscholar.
York, 1960, p. 7.
9 See for example Pan Bin,
3 Farrells, Tony, The Farrell Review
‘Rethinking the business model
of Architecture and the Built
of egg production,’ National
Environment; Our Future in Place,
University Singapore, 2019, http://
http://www.farrellreview.co.uk/
www.sde.nus.edu.sg/arch/gallery/
explore/education-outreach-
ay1617_year4_
skills/1C.1, (accessed 13 January
panbin_rethinking
2019).
thebusinessmodel
4 Wigglesworth, S., ‘Cuisine and ofeggproduction/.
Architecture: a recipe for a
10 See for example Shah Akshey,
wholesome diet,’ Architectural
‘Student Sitopia’2017, in Morgan
Design, Food + Architecture 68,
and Negrea (Eds) DABE Part 2
issue 7, 1998: 102, (accessed 24
Architecture publication, 2017,
September 2018).
University of Nottingham,
5 For example see the chapter by p. 68-69. http://issuu.com/
William Rubel, ‘Artisan Bread’ in morgan_nottinghamarch_part2/
Martin-McAuliffe, S. (Ed.), Food docs/dabe_part_2_arch_
and Architecture: At the Table, catalogue_2017_1p_ .
Bloomsbury Academic, London,
2016.
74
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11 Salk Institute for Biological 13 Ashok, Ganapathy Iyer, Review of
Studies, About Salk Institute, Approaches to Learning adopted
http://www.salk.edu/about/ by Architecture Students in the
visiting-salk/about-salk- Coursework of Architectural Design,
architecture/. University of Cardiff, 2015, http://
orca.cf.ac.uk/74414/1/Full%20
12 Moloney, Mary, Cork Institute
Paper_Approaches%20to%20
of Technology, Lecturer in
Learning07615.pdf, (accessed 14
Structures, Year 1 and 2.
January 2019).
thebusinessmodel
ofeggproduction/.
75 Margaret Mulcahy
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Teaching a Taste for Architecture

Author(s): Margaret Mulcahy

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/26950724

Architectural Association of Ireland is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and

This content downloaded from

Teaching a Taste for Architecture:

Learning architectural design is a life-long process1 that can

Why link introductory architectural training with other

As future professionals, current students will be required

Food and architecture can both demonstrate hospitality

As well as being thematically rich and complex, food

Next they transition from the wholly abstract space of

Main Course: Food as Concept -

Food in Cork is part of the local tradition and much talked

Culinary Performance and Space Requirements

Students realised that more than one activity can happen

One pavilion design drew on the material copper - as it

Dessert: From Design to Tectonics

Ways of developing an architectural design concept may

With their pavilion designs, students place food at the

Central to an architect’s education must be learning how

(CCAE Year One, Semester One, Project 6, Design Studio

Proposed model for a ‘foundational year’ for

Example of Lightbox, Laura Hurley CCAE

Final Model, Food Pavilion Project Laura

Final Model, Food Pavilion Project Artur Calyj

Final Model, Food Pavillion

Final Model, Food Pavillion

Concept Model, Food Pavilion

From Concept to Design Resolution Aoife

Final Model, Food Pavilion

CIT Concrete Laboratory,

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