Teaching Beyond the Curriculum

Abstract

Our relationship with food is not a solitary act but an act of community, resistance, and empowerment. In the essay “Cooking as Inquiry,” Jennifer Brady describes the technique as adding “layers to the typically disembodied practices of social research that have long overlooked the body and the mundane rituals of foodmaking as sites of knowledge.” This paper and presentation will explore the “cooking as inquiry” research method’s potential within architectural design education. When applied to the design field, these new sites of knowledge can expand our perspectives, whether it be a new understanding of how to experiment with materials, a new sensory ethnographic study of a place and community, or a new understanding of domestic spaces through drawing. Cooking as inquiry takes an active role in understanding the complex history of food and its relationship to colonialism, space, and design by embodying the meals we consume. In my courses, this method is used as a way for students to connect with their own culture, community, or personal interest. Through making a dish, ritual, or meal, students are asked to study its history and document the making of the meal through their preferred media, such as drawing, digitally recreating the spaces of production, or recording and editing the process. By approaching a topic from a historical, design, and sensory perspective, students can interconnect the spatial and economic history and view food as a material study with its own agency and power as a cultural agent. Cooking your research allows designers to embody food as more than just an object but as a cultural agent that inscribes itself into rituals, daily life, and performance.