Around a table, we bond and unbond. Eating is both one of the most primitive acts and the backbone of getting together.   

In a world where time appears to slip through our fingers, the time dedicated to the act of eating has drastically diminished, as it has been devoured. Eating is no longer confined to the traditional table, but also happens while walking down the street, while working, while watching a movie or reading a book - losing not only its time but also its place.   

During rush hour moments, when public spaces transform into temporary dining areas.  Sidewalks, steps, ledges, and even green areas become scenes of improvised meal scene. The surfaces used for dining may vary depending on individual preferences and availability. Some may opt for a park bench, while others prefer to sit on building steps or windowsill.

Starting with an observation of the “mealtime habits” of the city, walking through the common/public space, participants will identify the precise rituals that are woven around the act of eating. They will document the stories behind these meals using photography, micro-trottoir interviews, video and drawings. Based on this exploration, the second part of the week will be dedicated to craft a 1:1 table by stimulating the expression and constructive understanding in a sensitive and poetic way. On the last day, the artifacts will be challenged in their context while sharing a meal.

À table!

People eat alone and anonymously, with friends or even with strangers. The restaurant is more than just a place to eat. Depending on its character, it is a meeting place for different publics. They range from international gourmet temples to simple neighbourhood restaurants. The regulars‘ table, for example, is a meeting place for acquaintances but not necessarily friends. At the beginning of the 20th century, the neighbourhood restaurant (also known as a „Beiz“ in German-speaking Switzerland) was an urban building block, preferably occupying the corners of the ground floors in newly built neighbourhoods. They offered a similar range of beer and simple dishes. Today, the world of restaurants is very diverse and the classic neighbourhood pub is on the decline. Restaurant chains, cafés and espresso bars increasingly characterise the street scene. In recent years, the take-away business has also increased significantly. New forms of communal eating and drinking have also emerged: lunch tables are popping up and housing estates are developing communal catering facilities.

How do today‘s students see the role of neighbourhood pubs? What should they do in the future? Or is this form no longer appropriate? What kind of places would take their place?

In a first step, the workshop will visit and analyse a selection of restaurants and neighbourhood pubs in Basel, including their significance for social life in the neighbourhood, their integration into the urban fabric, their spatial configurations and their impact on the local economy and environment. In a second step, visions of the neighbourhood pub of the future are created in models. The large-scale models are made exclusively from recycled food packaging and packaging used for food transportation.

„To sharpen the eyes like a sword. Not just to touch the landscape, but to cut through it, to measure beyond the body, to measure between heaven and earth, to invent horizons. Lines that take refuge in points, disembodied, yet more precise than anything previously touched and seen. Torn from gravity. Torn from the terror of the boundless landscape. Memory and longing: That is architecture. Built or unbuilt.“ Raimund Abraham, 1986

The global demand for food is growing steadily as the world‘s population increases. Eating habits, standardization and consumption require additional yield, which is disposed of in abundance through food waste, sometimes unused. Our food systems therefore have a direct impact on the areas and everyday spaces in which we live: What influencing factors shape landscape and architecture? Alternative juxtaposition: mass production or primeval forest? How does a new cultural understanding of food - food revolution - manifest itself? What beauties do wasteland, green spaces and biodiversity offer? What terroirs are emerging for urban and rural areas? What are sustainable cultural landscapes? Packaging: plastic or fungus? How can the coexistence of plant, human and material become legible?

In the „Food Tectonic“ seminar, we set out together to find answers to these questions. We view the future as a design process in which we participate fictitiously by creating scenarios and visual worlds. The confrontation of the everyday does not seem superficially boring to us. We draw from the ordinary in order to change it. We use digital collage as a form of thinking for „reflected seeing“ and as a form of action in the sense of „discovering action“. „Food Tectonic“ is an attempt to recognize and visualize new relationships between food and space and to search for new images beyond the boundaries of the image, which can certainly be utopian!

Due to standards, materials from the inedible to the edible are declared as waste and thrown away along their path. We trust the expiry dates more than our own senses. During the summer school, we want to divert this flow of waste. What is thrown away is our source, be it food, material or any types of leftovers. We will proceed with it, we will cook with it, we will build with it. The climax of the week will be reached in the middle. We build up to this point. And then we start to disassemble everything again, or use it until nothing is left.

source: We will explore different scales of waste. From discovering the places where waste is accumulated around Basel, the leftovers of the harvest on the fields, to the kitchens with their cooking scraps - we aim to deviate the flow of materials from their usual paths, and reimagine the tastes and spaces in-between. During the first part of the week, we harvest what is usually lost.

process: We cherish the leftovers, we invent, we build, we cook. Based on what we know, combined with intuition and experimentation. Following the logic of Bricolage, we will build up a wonderful world of waste and taste in the middle of the week and celebrate it with an exuberant lunch.

return: What is left and where does it go? How do we clean up after the feast? We try to disassemble everything again during the last part of the week. Following the path of the materials once declared as waste and then deviated into our feast. We continue to follow their paths for a bit longer, until we place every material we have used back into the flow of things.

Clay pots are some of the oldest known human artefacts. Along with baskets and waterskins, they are some of the first man made containers for food preparation, preservation and presentation.

They are also some of the first long lasting objects to display systematic ornamentation and play with shapes and abstract representations. The primal, archaic relationship we have as species with clay is felt from the very first touch.

The spatial potential inherent to the plasticity of clay, the immediacy of the -more or less skillful- forming of an intentional shape and burning it into a kiln, still the clear need to understand and tame the materiality of this product of nature, while letting go of a part of one’s expectations and perfectionism, make of working with clay a masterclass of creativity, spontaneity, freedom and humility.

The presentation plate, the jug, the tea pot, even the vase, are all playing a more or less conscious role in our rituals around food, the way we appreciate our food and recognize and celebrate the care that was taken to grow and prepare it, enabling a reflection about quality, processes and sustainability.

During this workshop, after initially testing the potential and limits of clay, we will develop one or several pieces of a tea service or presentation tableware.

We will focus on the creative processes and on the untold spatial potential within vessels. Drawing from inspiration found during visits in the city of Basel, hijacking design, crossing urban and nature observation, pattern making and automatic drawing, we will develop an ensemble of experimental tableware, maybe questioning the ergonomics of eating, surely celebrating the dance of dining alone or together.