Architectural Mealscapes: A paradigm for Interior Design for Food

Since the beginning of humanity, food and design have been inseparable. When the first primitive tribes with an interest in cooking established a food-preparing fire they created the first meals, established the first eating environments and built the first primitive shelters. Back in 1852 the German architect Gottfried Semper developed a theory on the “four elements of Architecture” tracing the origin of architecture back to the rise of the early human settlement and the creation of fire. With the notion ‘hearth’ as the first motive in architecture and the definition of three enclosing motives; mounding, enclosure and roof, Semper linked the cultural and social values of the primordial fireplace with the order and shape of architecture. He claimed that any building ever made was nothing but a variation of the first primitive shelters erected around the fireplace, and that the three enclosing motives existed only as defenders of the “sacred flame”. In that way Semper developed the idea that any architectural scenery can be described, analyzed and explained by understanding the contextual, symbolic and social values of how the four basic motives of hearth, mounding, enclosure, and roof are jointed together.
The purpose of this paper has therefore been to test the idea of a new paradigm for ‘Interior Design for Food’ taking into account the reflective perspective and critical thinking of architectural theory like for instance developed with Semper, when studying the eating environment