Discovery Food - Culinary Architecture

Abstract

What keeps places unique in times of globalization? If information, goods, food, architecture are the same everywhere, what`s the difference between places? What are people identifying with?

Eating habits are a main factor of cultural identification. How can architecture contribute to these feelings of belonging, self awareness and joy? How can it teach something about the place and the people living there?

What if a new kind of culinary architecture can help opening people`s eyes towards their own eating culture? What if they would learn rediscovering and appreciating its richness there?

The American mixture can be seen as a micro cosmos of the whole world under ongoing globalization. Since the U.S. is a very progressive country, I claim that studying their experiences can help us understand future trends of our global culture. Learning from their problems will help understand or even avoid the same problems elsewhere.

One of the American challenges is obesity. Researchers expect U.S. life expectancy to fall dramatically in coming years because of obesity. This would be a startling shift in a long-running trend toward longer lives.

What is American? How can the American culture be captured? How do Americans identify themselves? They are part of a blend of virtually every culture on this earth. Idealistically, nobody can be a stranger because everybody is. They have one thing in common: their ancestor`s or even their own history of dissatisfaction, hope, journey, arrival and good or bad luck in the new homeland.