Pratt Kitchen: Pilot Event

On April 18, Pratt Presents and the School of Architecture featured a discussion about the role of food in our environment as it intersects with art, culture, architecture, and science. The event, “Food, Culture, and Beyond,” was held in Higgins Hall Auditorium on the Brooklyn campus. The evening was organized by architect and pastry chef Savinien Caracostea; Meredith TenHoor, associate professor of undergraduate architecture; and Sanford Kwinter, architectural theorist and professor of undergraduate architecture, who moderated the conversation.

Participants included Asako Iwama, artist, cook, and former leader of the kitchen team at Studio Olafur Eliasson; Mark Ladner, executive chef at the Michelin star-rated Italian restaurant Del Posto; and Charlotte Birnbaum, writer and culinary historian. The participants gave visual presentations exploring the points of connection among food, dining, and other forms of art and culture, both in traditional contexts and today’s food scene.

Birnbaum discussed dining traditions and the importance of sugar in Baroque banquets, as well as forays into food and art by famous artists such as Andy Warhol and Salvador Dali. Iwama explored cooking as an act of performance and the community aspect of food making, and Ladner focused on trends in the contemporary fine dining landscape.

The discussion was part of the new Pratt Kitchen initiative, an experimental design lab that will focus on projects, research, and events that examine that connection between food and culture.