Athenaeum
Athenaeum, derived from the term Athena, refers to institutions that focus on knowledge, literacy, and scientific study. Our goal for this culinary institute is to educate both students and the general public about one’s responsibility to make conscious and healthy decisions about eating, as it has great implications to society and the environment.
The narrative is summarized by one primary principle: Food Literacy. In definition, food literacy means the ability to make informed choices about food that support one’s health, community, and the environment. The culinary institute plan to educate not only students, but also visitors who come dine in the restaurant by providing an hands-on learning experience on improving food literacy, ultimately preparing students and the public to be innovative, curious, and conscientious cooks in the future.
To elaborate the idea of food literacy and translate it into spatial qualities, the project first analyzed the given program and separated them into groups such as private vs public, students vs visitors, indoors and outdoors, which allows for the generation of the grouping of spaces where some overlaps another, which creates a sense of adjacency and was really helpful in our initial design stage. One important takeaway was the importance of an intersectional quality between the teaching and working kitchen, while having close proximity to the garden.
The journey of learning is not linear, nor was it meant to be.
The whole process of a visitor coming to dine in the restaurant is unconventional: it is a hands on learning experience about food literacy where visitors walk through the whole process from picking out fresh ingredients to prepping a finished dish. First, the visitor would enter through the HUB or cultural center, where they learn the idea of food literacy, then they would walk through the garden and storage to pick out fresh ingredients and dry ingredients. Afterwards they would prepare these ingredients with the guidance of sous chefs in the working kitchen. Finally leading to the tasting of their self made dish as well as other chef prepared meals in the restaurant.
