scholarly journals The Nourishing Art

IDEA JOURNAL ◽  
1969 ◽  
pp. 35-45
Author(s):  
Jane Lawrence ◽  
Rachel Hurst

Cooking is regarded as one of the most basic characteristics of civilised existence, almost as critical as shelter in defining and reading the human condition. Frascari (2002) used cooking as an analogy for design suggesting that ‘to build and cook are a necessity, but to build and cook intelligently is the chief obligation of architecture and cuisine’ (p. 3). What is it about this ordinary activity that invites comparison? Is it that the everyday acts of cooking are primary generators of spatial practices and material culture? Or is it that the production of food bears numerous parallels with the production of built space – each following a recipe or plan to manipulate elements into an entity definitively judged by the physical senses? This paper builds upon a companion work titled, ‘Eating Australian Architecture’ (Hurst & Lawrence, 2003), which investigated a pedagogical approach based on parallels between food and design for teaching first year architectural students. In this paper, the focus is on a detailed application of this method to typological analyses of contemporary domestic architecture. It uses three examples of influential Australian design practices, selecting from each a paradigm with which they are associated. Food metaphors of raw, medium and well- done are used to explore emergent characteristics and experiential qualities within the current architectural climate. The apparent extremes between raw and cooked, like those between excess and austerity, are re-evaluated not as simple oppositions or measures of success, but as equally rich modes of approach to design. The argument is made for gastronomy as a persuasive interrogatory tool for the sensory and holistic examination of the built environment.

2009 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 426-459 ◽  
Author(s):  
Krisztina Fehérváry

In the two decades since the fall of state socialism, the widespread phenomenon ofnostalgiein the former Soviet satellites has made clear that the everyday life of state socialism, contrary to stereotype, was experienced and is remembered in color. Nonetheless, popular accounts continue to depict the Soviet bloc as gray and colorless. As Paul Manning (2007) has argued, color becomes a powerful tool for legitimating not only capitalism, but democratic governance as well. An American journalist, for example, recently reflected on her own experience in the region over a number of decades:It's hard to communicate how colorless and shockingly gray it was behind the Iron Curtain … the only color was the red of Communist banners. Stores had nothing to sell. There wasn't enough food… . Lines formed whenever something, anything, was for sale. The fatigue of daily life was all over their faces. Now… fur-clad women confidently stride across the winter ice in stiletto heels. Stores have sales… upscale cafés cater to cosmopolitan clients, and magazine stands, once so strictly controlled, rival those in the West. … Life before was so drab. Now the city seems loaded with possibilities (Freeman 2008).


2008 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 13-22
Author(s):  
Daniele Abreu e Lima

1949 marks the beginning of a radical change in the relation between New Zealanders and their homes. The new government at that time began encouraging home ownership in opposition to the existing policy of renting state houses. In those days, one of the most influential architects in the country was Max Rosenfeld, a Czech immigrant who became known mainly through the Auckland magazine The Weekly News. Rosenfeld hadn't produced any iconic building or brought any revolutionary aesthetic style. Nevertheless his contribution to New Zealand domestic architecture was tremendous, though today he is hardly ever mentioned. This paper proposes to shed light on the work of this architect focusing on his participation in The Weekly News publication which started in 1949. For almost a decade Rosenfeld became known as the "Home Architect" following the name of his magazine column. His ideas and architectural advice became very popular and his publications inspired owners and helped builders to familiarize themselves with the Modern way of living and building. Rosenfeld is mainly quoted in reference to the popularization of New Zealand plan books, a kind of publication renowned for containing projects made to fit just about any taste, budget and site. Seen with disdain by some, those books were, nevertheless, the most efficient vehicle for the dissemination of architecture into the everyday life of ordinary Kiwis. In that sense Rosenfeld can be seen as one of the essential contributors to the modern building practice we find in New Zealand, which decisively influences the way Kiwis live today.


Author(s):  
Lisa C. Robertson

This book uncovers a range of new models for modern living that emerged in response to social, economic and political changes in nineteenth-century London, and investigates the literature that gave expression to their novelty. It brings together visual and literary representations to identify a series of new designs for domestic space that change the way people lived together in the metropolis, including model dwellings, women’s residences, settlement housing and the garden city suburb. It focuses on the ways that language shapes the built environment and domestic architecture in particular, but also attends to the ways that domestic practice shapes discursive patterns and literary representation. It argues that these new designs for urban living responded to shifting perspectives about gender, class and sexuality; but equally, it demonstrates that these innovations in domestic design forged opportunities for refashioning both individual and collective identities. Home and Identity in Nineteenth-Century Literary London offers readers a new blueprint for understanding the ways in which literature imaginatively and materially produce the city’s built environment. In so doing, it also indicates what resources the nineteenth-century city — and the literature that responded to it — can offer for thinking through the most urgent problems of today’s urban environment environments.


Author(s):  
Ryan A. Quintana

This chapter examines the everyday spatial practices of enslaved Carolinians, particularly focusing on the Lowcountry. It closely illuminates the varied landscapes, communities, and politics that such daily practices produced and maintained, demonstrating that black South Carolinians took advantage of their requisite movement and the demands of the plantation enterprise to stake their own claims to South Carolina’s territory.


Author(s):  
Madeleine Leonard

This chapter presents an overview and reflection of the range of methods involved in researching teenagers’ spatial practices in a divided city. The research draws on the ‘new sociology of childhood’ as its theoretical framework. This involves seeing young people as competent social actors in their own right. It involves recognising that young people do not simply reflect adult assumptions about the everyday world but develop their own ways of seeing and knowing. It prioritises young people’s points of views and uses methodologies which encourage young people’s voices to be heard. The study utilised a range of methods including questionnaires, focus group discussions, essays and photo prompts and the chapter outlines how each method contributed to the aims and objectives of the research.


2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 444-469 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert A. Saunders ◽  
Rhys Crilley

When and where one can urinate is increasingly politicised around the globe. As an example of bio-political power, the provision, regulation and access to public toilets reflects larger structures in any given society. However, there is another side to micturition, that is the use of urine as a manifestation of bodily power over another/others. This article analyses the politics of the urinal through a close reading of the men’s toilet in The Lismore pub in Partick, Scotland, thus bringing together these two threads via the concept of everyday effigial resistance. In our interrogation of a politicised urinal that asks users to ‘piss’ on historical figures associated with the Highland Clearances, we aim to push International Relations to follow Enloe’s call for the study of ‘mundane practices… and the most intimate spaces’ by considering the most banal aspects of the human condition as part of its remit. Our case study serves as an explicit political intervention, one which through its geographic and geopolitical scales makes an argument for engaging with the mundane, vernacular and vulgar in everyday IR. Pisser sur le passé : les dédouanements des hautes terres, la résistance à l’effigie et la politique quotidienne de l’urinoir


2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 129-141
Author(s):  
Amy-Ruth Holt ◽  
Karen Pechilis

Abstract Historians writing on modernity often remark on the power of the visual, appealing to Walter Benjamin's influential observation that ‘modernity under late capitalism is dominated, and haunted, by dream-images and commodified visual fetishes’ (Benjamin 1968; Levin 1993, p.23; Ramaswamy 2003, p.xiii). Yet, studies of bhakti commonly focus on the literature and biographies of the bhakti saints instead of its visual dimensions in art, material culture, and performance. In this special issue, scholars of religion and art history writing on diverse visual cultures, communities, and geographical locations under the umbrella of the contemporary era reveal two distinguishing features of bhakti. The first is bhakti's impetus to establish the artist's, devotee's, or saint's individual and communal identity that resituates today's religion. The second is bhakti's formation of emotive imagery with visual agency animated by participatory desires that inspire the creation and re-creation of imagery and performances that speak directly to the everyday. Identity and visuality, found together in contemporary bhakti imagery, shape our distinctive analysis and redirect Benjamin's original statement from postcolonial nation-building towards the vitality of devotional participation.


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