Tessellating Culinary Culture
The transformation through culinary and culture in domestic kitchens
A domestic kitchen is a place reflecting social phenomena and human nature. People have multi activities in the kitchen, included slaughter animals, preserving food, cooking. The relationship between the kitchen and dining room is closed. Compared to the contemporary period, Hong Kong's kitchen has been disappearing. Also, the core values and narrative were neglected. The project is about the tessellation of culture and culinary practices. The scenarios of instruments, characters, customs, and settings showed how culture influences culinary practices, present the transformation of the interior and domestic lifestyles.
The tessellation is about experiencing the cuisine and culinary culture by the time, objects, and various combinations. Also, showing the perception of the changes, for example, surrounding environment, cuisine, and culture. The paintings are presenting various scenarios, transform through historical changes, vintage Hong Kong, the colonial era, and future kitchen imagination. The design is about the review and development of historical kitchen settings. At the same time, make the extension to contemporary and future settings. The outcome is about replacing the interior setting, food, and clothing with gradual layers and showing the transformation between old and new alternately. The outcomes of tessellation are regarding the obvious changes in the interior setting.
The project will be divided into 4 chapters, including consumer society, localness vs global perspectives, dematerialized immersive kitchen and compressed kitchen. Moreover, videos showing the transformation from new to old and presenting the iconic cuisine, kitchen utensil, historical environment in specific periods.
Chapter 1: Transformation between consumer society and culinary culture
In the past, people have to prepare food and cook for a long time, starting from slaughtering animals, making a fire, the process is more complex than now. People usually buy instant food and well-processed food in supermarkets, also spend the least of their time cooking. During the contemporary period, most people have full-time jobs. White-collar is a type of workers known for earning higher average salaries doing highly skilled work. In order to have a higher working efficiency, they aim to have a convenient working environment. Therefore, the setting of the table and spatial environment is important. Through the original painting,‘ The Milkmaid’ painted by Johannes Vermeer. The Transformation focuses on the changes of the window, wall, floor, food, drink. The changes showed a new lifestyle and value of the kitchen.
Chapter 2: Localness vs Global perspectives
A domestic kitchen is a place reflecting social phenomena and human nature. People have multiple activities in the kitchen, including slaughtering animals, preserving food, and cooking. The colonial period began with the occupation of Hong Kong Island in 1841 during the First Opium War. Under the impact of British colonial rule, Hong Kong became an international port in Asia, and increased the diversity of products. Therefore, Hong Kong has a great potential for integrating various food cultures, and reflecting special local food cultures. Moreover, the market is a unique place for observing and recording the local food culture and lifestyle. The transformation is about replacing the spatial components into local market setting and international market setting, the change of objects are demonstrating the difference between localness and global perspective.
Chapter 3: Dematerialized Immersive Kitchen
Inspired by the futuristic movie, they have vivid images with decoration and innovative materials. The beginning of kitchen is about persevering food and cooking. After people have completed development of kitchen, they started to concern the storage, shape of cabinets, color and materials. Therefore, the question is about how is future kitchen will look like in an extreme way. Therefore, the transformation is about integrating immersive experience and dematerialization in a kitchen space. All the equipment and utensils will be hidden. The transformation starts from dematerialized white space and projects various scenes with immersive experience.
Chapter 4: Compressed Kitchen
Due to the limited space and contemporary lifestyle, the importance of kitchen has decreased. The kitchen space has been compressed into a small unit according to the target users. The selection of limited utensils also shows the importance of cooking processes and simplification of perseverating food and cooking. From the original painting, shows various kinds of food and utensils in a family setting. The aim is about how it would change in the contemporary period. The transformation is about the compression from a full kitchen, half kitchen to a compressed kitchen, showing the changes in tableware, kitchen utensils, and lifestyle. At the same time, presenting the spatial setting with limited space.
