The Architect's Dilemma: Searching for an Architecture of Pleasure +

THE ARCHITECT’S DILEMMA 1 The Architect’s Dilemma: Searching for an Architecture of Pleasure + Sustenance AMANDA SCHMALTZ Miami University INTRODUCTION amount of organizational skill.”3 Where architecture and the culinary arts diverge, as Architect Donald Kunze writes, “Because food indicated by Collins, is due to the fact that and architecture are superficially very architects have forgotten to judge their work different but really closely connected, the with “degrees of excellence” and have become method that explores connections has to overly concerned with “being ‘contemporary’ cover a broad and discontinuous ground.”1 or ‘reactionary,’ instead of whether their work Architecture and the culinary arts are both was good or bad.”4 The concept of good practiced and appreciated by people who seek versus bad helps shape the way humans to improve the ways in which our most basic biologically and psychologically perceive their physiological needs are met. The two environment. disciplines, as the sublimation of mere food and shelter are creative solutions that have Architect Marco Frascari critiques mainstream the ability to provide pleasure and therefore contemporary architecture by comparing the sustain and enrich our everyday lives. I would built products of Modern and Post-Modern argue that the culinary arts have been much theories to fast food. Fast food is here being more widely successful than architecture at used as something that is generally accomplishing this charge. This paper surveys recognized as unhealthy or “bad for us.” a selection of connections between the two Frascari contends that these theories’ ultimate fields as a means of discovering what might goals are to “produce buildings that ‘look be learned in the field of architecture from good’ over a predetermined life span” and gastronomic pursuits. goes on to state that “these look like the real thing, but they have been designed to be THE GASTRONOMIC ANALOGY gulped down...there is no possibility, no reason, to take the time and pleasure to taste Architectural theoretician Peter Collins pointed them.”5 out this possibility in 1967’s Changing Ideals in Modern Architecture, when he wrote of the FOOD + ARCHITECTURE AS ONE “gastronomic analogy,” suggesting that gastronomic arts held a unique connection One of my favorite childhood television shows, with architecture. Both architecture and the Fraggle Rock, represents a moment where culinary arts are “a necessity rather than a food and architecture are one in the same. luxury” and are each equally concerned with The show’s main characters, humanoid both science and art.2 In addition each creatures, called Fraggles love to eat. Not only discipline, writes Collins, “requires intuition, do they love to eat, but they love to eat imagination, enthusiasm and an immense buildings. The tiniest inhabitants of Fraggle 2 Rock, the Doozers, who love to build just as life in balance. Shouldn’t we architects take a much as the Fraggles love to eat, construct cue from the Doozers and focus on pleasing the buildings the Fraggles so passionately those who will ultimately consume our devour. They’re relationship is symbiotic. The buildings? And shouldn’t we make sure to do Doozers build so much and so often that if the so in such a way that doesn’t overrun our Fraggles didn’t eat these constructions (made precious environment with creations that no from primarily radish dust) they would surely one wants to eat? run out of room to build in the cavernous underground world that is Fraggle Rock. The FOODIE NATION Doozers, as tiny ‘archichefs’, spend much of their energy coming up with ways to make Food is a topic that has in recent years left the sure the Fraggles continue to consume their confines of the kitchen and the occasional buildings, so they can continue to build. restaurant and found its way into the minds of the masses. We have come far from the days when “The Galloping Gourmet” and Julia Child’s “The French Chef” were the lone television programs dedicated to cooking and eating well. The inception of The Food Network nearly 15 years ago gave aspiring chefs and foodies9 alike 24/7/365 access to the culinary world. A world that was previously contained in their mother’s dusty cookbooks and in the lifestyle sections of the Sunday paper. According to their website, The Food Network, is “committed to exploring new and different ways to approach food - through pop culture, competition, adventure, and Figure 1: Jim Henson’s Fraggles, Doozers and travel–while also expanding its repertoire of constructions. technique-based information.”10 And while The Food Network may be the only network A recurring character in Fraggle Rock is Uncle completely dedicated to food, it is not the only Traveling Matt, who has ventured into “Outer one to recognize the growing interests in all Space” a place inhabited by the “silly things culinary. Every major national network creatures” who of course are humans and (ABC, NBC, CBS, etc.) has at least one show “outer space” is our everyday world. In one devoted to cooking, or has regular food episode, Uncle Traveling Matt stumbles upon segments on their most popular shows. Three what he sees as “the ultimate Doozer of the Travel Channel’s most popular shows construction” (in reality the Seattle Space Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations, Food Needle, built for the 1962 World’s Fair).6 He Paradise and Bizarre Foods specifically feature writes in a postcard to his nephew, Gobo, that food, but many of their other programs “it looked absolutely delicious” then after include pieces on distinctive regional foods attempting to take a large bite out of the base and must-haves while traveling. concludes that it “tasted terrible.”7 As he gazes at the image of the Space Needle on There are upwards of sixty print magazines all the postcard, one discouraged Fraggle says completely concerned with food, wine and “too bad...it looks so delicious,” as another cooking and numerous other health and corrects, “Looks aren’t everything.”8 fitness related ones that have running Conversely, the standard Doozer buildings columns on eating. The world-wide-web is an may not look like much (See Fig. 2) but they arena for exploring the culinary world as well, provide pleasure not only to the Fraggles who whether it is through the official pages of any consume them, but also to the Doozers who of the television or print sources above or the build them and thusly keep an entire way of countless blogs maintained by chefs, foodies, THE ARCHITECT’S DILEMMA 3 and even architects. The point is that eating is something we have to do in order to live, but it is something that we take pure pleasure in as well. In the words of the late Luciano Pavarotti, “One of the very nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating.”11 ARCHITECTURE’S GROWING POPULARITY To have a roof (of any sort) over one’s head as protection from the elements is the fundamental basis of architecture. It is Figure 2: Herzog + De Meuron’s Bird’s Nest. something that, like food, has been taken for granted by the masses until recently. For ARCHITECTURE + PLEASURE perhaps the first time since the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, architecture In her essay “Architecture and Pleasure”, too has become of interest to the masses, Parisian architect, Odile Decq wonders if thanks primarily to the buildings constructed architecture can “anticipate and shape new for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing directions through so-called avant-garde China.12 From Herzog and De Meuron’s forms”.13 She also notes a trend that National Stadium (or “Bird’s Nest”) to PTW architects in the beginning of the twenty first Architect’s National Aquatic Center (or “Water century are “turning to the notion of pleasure” Cube”) the fifteen new, fourteen renovated, having dealt with function and social needs ad seven temporary and five related buildings nauseum throughout the twentieth century.14 showcased before and during the 2008 games managed to turn the world’s attention from First pointing out the complexity of desires the games themselves to the venues they and pleasures, she reminds us of what we were held in. These structures not only already instinctively know when she writes: provided the physical space for the games, but also tempted the world to reconsider …Our desires are always evolving. They architecture as a venue for pure delight. cannot be controlled and predefined. They are Unfortunately, while the Bird’s Nest, always personal and only sometimes Watercube and other Olympic structures were collective. They are absolutely contingent and instrumental in giving architecture a place in dependent on external influences–global, water cooler conversations, their lasting effect political, economic, and climatic–as well as on on how the general public views and internal conditions such as one’s last lunch, appreciates architecture is doubtful. Though health or love.15 we are a more globally mobile society today than ever before, the number of people However, in agreement with and at the same outside of China who will actually experience time in contrast to Frascari, Decq writes that these works first hand is small. The number of in spite of contemporary architecture’s Chinese citizens who will benefit from their increasingly ephemeral nature “its duration is creation, post August 2008 is probably even longer than the time of fashion” and in as smaller. These are buildings designed to be much we need to understand that “there is no “gulped down”. Perhaps though they can be such thing as a general or universal response viewed in a more positive light than Frascari’s to a program or site…everything is specific.”16 equation to fast food, it may be more accurate to describe these buildings as appetizers, whetting our palates for a meal to come.

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