FOGO Pop-Up Kitchen: The Home Outside the Home.

Interdisciplinary DDE Praxismodul 2019

Instructors

Dr Antonio Scarponi
MA Clemens Winkler

Project Partner

Hic et Nunc.

Timeframe

The module takes place over 4 weeks, from 25.03.18 to 18.04.18, from Tuesday to Friday, 9.00-17.00 - see timetable below for detailed hours and classrooms. Class sessions include discussions, mentoring sessions, in-class exercises, and independent study blocks. Projects are conducted individually or in a team (up to four students).

Overview and Objectives: Security, Privacy, Comfort, Belonging, Ownership

IKEA, one of the world leading retail home furniture companies, regularly publishes marketing studies on the “life at home” state of the world. According to the lastLife at Home Global Report 2018, 35% of people living in cities worldwide declared that there are places where they feel more at home than the space they actually live in[1]. Furthermore, the report found out that:
- There are five fundamental needs that we all seek in order to create that elusive feeling of home (security, privacy, comfort, belonging, ownership).
- Our neighborhood and communities play an increasingly important role in our homemaking experiences.
- Our cities offer us anonymous places for private moments, while our residential homes restrict our physical and mental privacy.

[1] Cfr: https://lifeathome.ikea.com/home/. Based on the 2016 report, statistic argued that 29% declared the same: https://newsroom.inter.ikea.com/publications/ikea-life-at-home-report-2016/s/ffb8f1d5-5aa9-4e9b-934b-c54118702a61

According to the report, Switzerland follows the world trend with little discrepancies. The methodology, the aims and the conclusions of this study is arguable in many respects, however the general reflection of this survey, offer interesting points of speculation that can be explored on the ground of FOGO areal with design students.

The course will be focused on the creation of a mobile, modular, pop-up kitchen to support “the feeling of the home outside of the four walls”. Students will be provided with raw materials to build a skeleton for a popup kitchen module completed with two bicycle wheels. With this material, the students will have to “cook” a mobile urban device that enhances a shared food preparation activity, becoming an urban mobile aggregator to empower emotional feelings that the life at home report address as the key findings of the “feeling at home outside the home”.

During the course of the project, students will be requested to design, build, test, document and photograph their contribution. The first two weeks will be focused on the design and construction of the popup kitchen. The second two weeks will be focused on the implementation, test, use, of the urban device as neighbor facilitator that will be possibly involve experiences, competences, knowledge of the FOGO Areal inhabitants. The project will be held in collaboration with Hic et Nunc (www.hic-et-nunc.me) and other external partners and contributors to this project are in the process of confirmation.

The kit designed by the students will be offered as “mobile” urban home furnishing to the Fogo Arealand remain at disposal of the community for further public activities.

Constraints:

Narrative

- taking the notion of home (security, privacy, comfort, belonging, ownership) as a narrative 
- students work on different kitchen habitats (abito ~ human approach; habit ~ social approach; agitare ~ ecological approach;)

Material

- the basic conceptualisation and chosen materials is fixed – the students focus on their personal angle on the topic
- mainly in the workshops the students will go for rests of bicycles, used kitchen tools and wooden planks to set up their mobile kitchen
- critical perspective on the social aspects of their portable kitchen sets: used in a diverse setting

Social Interactions and Diversity

- in the second part of the module, the students bring their settings into life, with cooking sessions, acting and performing, inviting, improvising at the FOGO Areal
- the outcome will be documentations via photo and video as well as scenes from Areal for the final exhibition of the interdisciplinary DDE modul

Deliverables

• Photos, Recordings
• Instagram Account? 
• Recipes, booklets and Actions for the final day

Methods to use:

Conceptual and Design Speed Dating:
Spinning off our debates on this topic, this method allows us to effectively brainstorm in any given directions. We will create a morphological table based on the feelings of home (security, privacy, comfort, belonging, ownership) and cooking utilities. The aim is to conceptualise further and to design a mobile part of a kitchen.

Side-specific walk to FOGO Areal:

Cooking recipe karaoke
This exercise should allow us to be open for any kinds of cooking events.. we will brainstorm on ingredients, preparations, and serving food and how this influences the way we would like to interact in the field. We will present our created recipes to each other – might it be our childhood dream, for the best social event, a molecular kitchen, cultural-fusion or a utopian meal.

Timetable

Availability of Lecturers in brackets []