Architecture & Commensality

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

I.    Architecture and Cuisine: crossing disciplinary fields

Architecture and Cuisine: between nature and culture
Architecture and cuisine: a design process between Art and Science
Fire: genesis of cooking, genesis of architecture
The house: family shelter, individual refuge
Culinary spaces: space and memory
Commensality: socialization around the table

II.    Ancient Rome

Urbs, insulae and tabernae
The Roman domus
The Roman convivium
The Roman diet
Christianity and the fall of the Roman Empire

III.    Middle Ages

The medieval city
The medieval urban house
The development of the cooking space within monasteries
The medieval diet
The medieval banquet

IV.    Modern Age

The influence of the Dutch house
The Parisian bourgeois house
The English houses
The modern kitchens
The Columbian Exchange and the modern diet
Civilised behaviours: table manners
The restaurant

V.    19^th Century

‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times’
Food supply and preservation systems
The Victorian houses
Parisian nineteenth-century houses
Domestic innovations
Kitchen and service areas
Domestic engineers
The dining-room: the space and the ritual

VI.    20^th Century and Contemporaneity

The post-War(s) world
The kitchen between wars and standardisation as a virtue
The good life: the American kitchen
The transfiguration of the dining space
Spatial standardisation, food standardisation
Culinary spaces: contemporary perspectives

Final Notes
Bibliography
Image sources