Designing is Cooking: A Museum of Gastronomy

Abstract

Those who eat share a relationship with design. The Museum of Gastronomy, a museum located at the Washington D.C. National Mall, would dedicate a space to a full-sense experience pursuing a relationship between food, culture, and design. The National Mall is a symbolic setting dedicated to U.S. heritage via museums, memorials, and the honoring of legacies accessible to the public. As the U.S. is a melting pot of different nationalities, this museum would fill an open niche devoted to celebrating the cultural heritage of cooking throughout the cycle of food consumption.

As consumers, regardless of notice or intention, we have an intimate relationship with food as means of survival. Cooking, the method for preparing this vital element, is also an expression of culture, style, and use of available resources. In essence, cooking is an everyday design: a crucial aspect of our very survival.

Therefore: food → cooking → design → survival → food → cooking

Similarly, it is the architect's mission to reach an effective design with available "ingredients," forces, or kit-of-parts within a project. In the Museum of Gastronomy, the architect would become the unifying source between a relationship literally built between food, people, and design in an interactive experience. This would result in a space dedicated to showcasing and combining the concept of "cooking is designing."

Incorporating these components into a museum located at the National Mall would personify an experience of the cooking processes as a building block of every-day observation of design.