“Learning from Food is the encounter of learning from what surround us attitude that transformed our relation with modernity, with a particular subject that breaches the division between inside and outside: Food; that portion of what surrounds us that we put in our mouths in order to construct ourselves. This outside that is consumed through the mouth is both nature and culture, which makes food a very problematic descriptor of both our objectivity and our subjectivity.” Joaquim Moreno

My interest in ritual is highly is influenced by my interest in testing the extremes of architecture’s influence on the behavior of its inhabitants. Operating across a number of scales, MOUTH, TABLE, KITCHEN and CITY; this project is a meditation on the symmetrical relationship between the everyday practice of rituals, the consumption of food and the spaces that facilitate and how that influences the architecture that contains it.

With this in mind I addressed my studio research towards the exploration of the role of ritual in our daily routines and its resonance within our spatial considerations. To this end I designated one of the most practiced food rituals, one familiar to me, Iftar in Ramadan, as the main topic of my research.

Mining the intrinsic hierarchies embedded and on display in the act of “IFTAR” (breaking fast) during Ramadan I designed an architecture that would accentuate this ritualistic fervor and perhaps re-think the relationship between architecture and ritual spaces. Envisioned as a series of episodic spaces operating across a set time line, (before sunset) when Muslims break their fast, the project heightens the spiritual process of preparing food as a personal indulgence in spirituality and then celebrates it by designating shared spaces for the consumption of the food, at times disrupting hierarchy at other times, highlighting it.

Embedded within the “unseen” (poche) spaces of the building are feedback systems. These are involved n every process of the food production. Within the room where the food is to be reshaped, large screens loop film of cooking shows, displaying to the patron the myriad of options available to them. Thousands of cutting, gouging and scraping implements further complicate the task of reshaping the food.

HVAC ducts transfer cooking fumes from the ovens to the other rooms, enticing the patrons of the possibilities ahead. Further testing the spirituality of the patrons the fumes are loaded with expectation and consequently anticipation or disappointment. As the meal is rolled onto a trolly out to the “public space” the patrons emerge into the share consuming area. The stair leading to the space shifts from ramps to stairs, moving patrons at different speeds, confusing the sequential order with which the meal was prepared.