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Four Notes on Meals and their doccumentation
When one goes about documenting a meal, either real or imaginary, there is often a common drawn element, in that the drawings follow the logic of an architectural plan. Take for example the diagrammatic sketches from A Pattern Language, (see images above). The sketched language of Christopher Alexander, is simple and didactic. To make the table itself of great importance, is to position connection, attention and sharing at the heart of not just the domestic space but perhaps the public one.
In an article about ‘Magic Table’ by Junya Ishigami (2006), Fosco Lucarelli notes Jeff Kaplon’s observation that, ‘the complexities of structural forces and creation of spatial relationships is achieved first at the scale of household objects.’ This is true in the logic of A Pattern Language, and has been traced in further detail through architects Junya Ishigami and Sarah Wigglesworth.
2. In relation to Ishigami’s table, the project, as described by Ishigami himself, is an exploration of architectural proportion. The table, made out of a thin pre-stressed aluminium, has been bent into an almost perfect circular shape. As the table is set with various objects; dinnerware, flowers and food, the curved sheet flattens into a perfectly thin line. The construction of the table has been documented through a series of causal drawings, mostly in plan. The loose concept sketches of where and how to place things upon the table note a series of calculations. These objects are given the logic of an architectural element that possesses its own structural integrity; dotted carefully on the table, as if intentional marks on a piece of paper. With this in mind, both the drawings and the table itself can read as acts of sketching. The thin line drawn in section, to the same thickness/weight as the objects placed on the table, frames the meal as a balanced act of forces.
This delicate treatment of the objects in the section are translated similarly to the plan.Each object has been placed with rigour, detached from its materiality, instead just one structural part of something larger. Junya Ishigami’s Magic Table, uses the scale and relativity of the table, but applies an acuteness, an attention to detail, the can be applied to any structural architectural endeavour. Further, he is then able to articulate this structural precision through the drawn documentation of the project. As noted at the conclusion of The Everyday and Everydayness, ‘There is an importance in acknowledging domestic life. There is poetry and consolation in the building and study of familiar things.’
Process Documentation of Junya Ishigami’s Magic Table. Images sourced from Creative Commons.
The Disorder of the Dining Table © Sarah Wigglesworth, 1997.
3. Sarah Wigglesworth + Jeremy Till in their diagrammatic studies ‘The Disorder of the Dining Table’, approach a similar understanding of the home and the mechanisms of the everyday.The study explores rituals of eating at the dining table. They note that these rituals played out on the plane of the dining table, are similar to the rituals of domestic life.
In uncovering the process of these drawings, Wigglesworth draws connections between how a table is set and how an architect draws a plan. When drawing a floor plan, there can be an almost sterile treatment, a lack of care and attention to what will take place. Like the meal can create an unpredictable shift in order, so can be the case at the scale of the home. The third drawing, diagramming the aftermath of a meal with eight people, becomes the basis for the floor plan of Straw Bale House, Wigglesworth’s own residence in the UK. The logic behind the messy, sketched composition of a floor plan here, understands that the energy found at the scale of the meal can be scaled upwards. While Ishigami’s table challenges the conditions of the dining table as something of simple structure and simple construction, Wigglesworth draws attention to it. The sketched traces of a meal pose an opportunity for a domestic floor plan that embraces the forces of emotion found in everyday life.
4. The domestic spaces we inhabit, and the rituals found within them, offer a foundation of understanding for larger scales, that can be harder to access or visualise. The domestic can be both careful and messy, unpredictable and laden with objects of affection or practicality. To notice the processes and rituals that surround one in the home; the laundry cycle or the kitchen bench throughout the day, could be an opportunity to better understand architectural forces out of our reach. And so I pose a question, if we begin to use drawing as a tool to trace and document these rituals, what aspects of order, structure and care will make themselves known?
Fosco Lucarelli, “The Limits of Rationality: Impossibly Thin Table by Junya Ishigami (2006),” Socks Studio, July 7, 2016, https://socks-studio.com/2016/07/07/the-limits-of-rationality-impossibly-thin-table-by-junya-ishigami-2006/.
Junya Ishigami, “Magic Table,” HIC Arquitectura, November 29, 2016, https://hicarquitectura.com/2016/11/junya-ishigami-magic-table/
Deborah Berke, “Architecture of the Everyday,” The Everyday and Everydayness, 1997, Princeton Architectural Press.
Sarah Wigglessorth, “The Disorder of the Dining Table” UOU Scientific Journal #04, July 4, 2022.