Some thoughts on cooking from an architect’s perspective. Ever since I was a kid, I have loved hanging around the kitchen and watching dishes being prepared. Dabbling at first by helping my mom bake brownies and later a kid’s generic pasta dish with butter and parmesan—which I still love when in need of a quick carb rush—cooking evolved to become a lifelong hobby, and eventually a commitment that is practiced daily.

Over the years, I had come to recognize that food has a particular identity well before it became the subject of a transformative, interpretative, and above all, a serious creative endeavor for me. What I mean by that is that I had to learn to ‘listen’ to the food and understand if the ingredients themselves had a calling to become something more than simply an all-purpose dish on a plate.

My apprenticeship to the art of cooking

While studying architecture, I rented a room that had previously served as a kitchen in a third-floor apartment of a modest house. In that minuscule space, barely 12 x 12 square feet, I slept, worked, and yes, entertained (Image 1). While the stove and range had been removed, the large porcelain sink was thankfully still there. It became essential as I was committed to cooking in my bedroom despite my landlord’s admonition not to. As soon as I moved in, I purchased a small used electrical hot plate at a local flea market, along with a new stainless-steel saucepan. Both items took their place on the drainboard next to the sink. I was resolved to cook basic dishes with these few utensils, but that was not the only challenge I had to overcome.

Managing how to preserve food without a refrigerator was a major setback in my culinary progress. The windowsill came in handy to store milk. Unfortunately, to my dismay, items would sometimes find their way down into the landlord’s garden. This was a real hassle, and tricky as I needed to retrieve the fallen items without being noticed by my landlord. Very quickly I resorted to buying one pint milk cartons that were easily consumed the same morning, alleviating the fear that the garden would become a perpetual a place for illicit items!

Initiation to cooking

On an almost daily basis, I came to appreciate in this kitchen-work-bedroom, how cooking mirrored many architectural processes that I was learning at the same time as a student. Without question, this was my first foray into dabbling with cooking beyond boiling an egg! My second initiation into cooking was almost a decade later during my first years teaching at the University of Kentucky. Cicely, the dean’s wife, was an excellent chef and knew how to entertain, and she took me under her wing and shared her favorite cooking books, while also patiently introducing me to the art of cooking. Jacques Pepin, Julia Child, and Alice Waters were among the leading chefs at the time, and became foundational to my future cooking adventures.

Today, I am more seasoned and confident in how I cook, especially after meeting many of my colleagues in academia who enjoy cooking and talk passionately about anything that has to do with cuisine and gastronomy; and this often to a fault. What I like is that both arts, cooking and architecture, are born from necessity and can each be traced back to cultural heritage. Cooking is a multi-sensory experience involving personal aesthetic pursuits all the while perfecting long-standing techniques such as creating an unctuous mirepoix. While honing my cooking skills, I discovered two broad approaches. Those who love to follow recipes, and those who love to interpret them. The latter is my credo!

Rigorous approach

It is my bias that many chefs found in the group relying on a rigorous line of attack turn their skills toward baking. Personally, I believe that baking is one of the highest art forms in cooking, one that demands constant attention, concentration, and a quasi-obsessive approach to following recipes. This rigorous approach reflects a baker’s learned and practiced techniques to the point that their hand gestures become second nature. As pastries and desserts are prepared, the final chef d’oeuvres are presented with a visual consistency where rules and boundaries define the staple dishes; a subtle building of a tradition within the culinary world which allows recipes to be perfected through gradual development over decades, and even centuries.

Being both a baker and a pastry chef commands a precise approach as baking is unforgiving. For example, if one substitutes ingredients or changes apportioned measurements, the end result may end up in a disaster. Switching between two simple yet complex ingredients such as baking powder or baking soda, can drastically change the baking time, appearance, texture, and most importantly, the desired flavor. I have tried my hand at baking and have dared to adjust recipes. The results have always been a major disappointment. With time, I have learned to limit my baking to my favorite childhood brownies, or the archetypical scones by Julia Child that fill the home with fond memories. Sadly, that is the extent of my foray into baking.

Intuitive approach

For many, and for me in particular, the pleasure of cooking is to interpret and work instinctively while creating a dish. I can open the fridge and find ingredients—often using leftovers along with fresh ingredients, especially since COVID—and create something that is both visually appealing and tasteful for my friends discriminating palettes. In this approach to cooking, I work intuitively and leisurely with quantities, flavors, textures, and colors. While I often claim success—I always joke that if disaster should strike (which it has), I have Domino Pizza’s delivery phone number readily available!—being intuitive does not mean that rules and boundaries are not respected. They are part of the fundamentals, yet one cannot be inhibited by them.

Inclined to plate my dishes in an appealing way (yes, as an architect aesthetic is part of my lexicon), I like to build visual contrast for the final presentation. To achieve this goal, I prefer that each component is handled in a different manner. For example, through use of a variety of knife techniques (chopping, slicing, dicing, or mincing). Experience has shown me how to be playful with those techniques to emphasize different sizes and shapes. I would argue that this enhances the overall composition and anticipated teasing of the taste buds.

While this modus operandi works well for me when cooking, the obvious issue that confronts me is that I tend to continuously adapt ingredients, measurements and techniques, and often fail to write down how and why my intuition worked, or how the dish ended up as a total disaster. In fact, each time that the type of dish is interpreted—while always choosing to highlight a ‘new’ ingredient as a star—the end product is similar but also unique and never repeatable.

For example, I love creating new pasta dishes, and while all my attempts are genuine, I can rarely recall what exactly gave the initial wow effect. Was it a last-minute ingredients found laying on the counter (i.e., ginger or lemon grass), or a special salt (Kosher versus Himalayan or lemon), or an unorthodox way of orchestrating the cooking of the components that made the difference. Perhaps this is what gives me the pleasure in creating and I admit that cooking in this manner has never let me fall into boredom. It is always a welcome journey.

Is cooking architecture, and is architecture cooking?

Perhaps, like architecture, each food preparation is like a type-dish with common characteristics that evolve and surprise. If ingredients are like functions (dining room, bedroom, kitchen, bathroom or living room in a domestic program), there is ample room to create a succulent type-dish/project. To simply rearrange the architectural functions might be a first line of defense to reinterpret a house/home. But to fundamentally rethink what is a bedroom, seems more in line in how I enjoy designing architecture.

Risk taking while cooking (not baking) is essential, and the preparation of every meal parallels architecture in the way that is a challenge to project and not simply to design. When cooking, there is always the subliminal push to do something different, to elevate the known to a new level that involves all the senses.

At the same time, in my intuitive approach to cooking I never shy away from foundational techniques. Over decades, my gestures have become more precise, more accurate, and perhaps more elegant. For example, when chopping, cutting, dicing, or mincing, I understand what is happening, adjusting at a glance, the eye in precise step with the hand. These gestures are similar to those that are practiced when sketching an architectural design.

In architecture, the need to understand what needs to be done, and to visualize what the project (creation) needs to be, I let the drawing command the respect that it is due, balancing the process between conscious desire and spontaneous discovery. This allows the process to be messy and rich similar to what a chef once said: that a dish “does not need to be perfect, it has to be delightful and surprising.” In both cooking and architecture, mastering techniques is essential, but inspiration remains key to creating something bold, adventurous, and original. It’s about taking risks that are often rewarded by a delighted meal, or an inspiring project.

The reputation of a number of contemporary chefs relies on their expressing different culinary cultures. I acknowledge this approach to be intimately linked to a personal background; a milieu that influences all of one’s senses. This is true in architecture if one acknowledges that design emerges from the heart, a personal perspective that inspires creation and looks for authenticity in what the project promises to bring.

My intuitive approach to cooking is also my downfall, as it has kept me away from pursuing a dream of becoming a professional chef. Perhaps another life will allow me this insane pleasure.

The need for consistency as a chef

This brings me to the question of consistency when cooking. In most restaurants it is easy to enjoy daily specials that showcase the inventiveness of the chef; often sumptuous and accompanied by a litany of ingredients babbled by the waiter so that I cannot even remember what is on offer when the third of five dishes is described.

What is more difficult and commands the need for greater uniformity (an ugly word if applied to architecture as the profession is praised on original thinking), is for repeat patrons to a restaurant who enjoy a particular dish never be disappointed. Because of this, consistency in cooking should be paramount if the dish aims to become a staple at one’s favorite restaurant.

However, both approaches—meticulous versus interpretative—build on an acquired foundation that is learned from precedence and shared experiences through food. While this is true for both the culinary and architecture professions, one must never deny the individual’s background. To practice in either profession by coordinating hand and mind is something I constantly invite students to develop and build upon.

Respecting the ingredient

In cooking it is important to discover, respect and highlight each ingredient that you intend to use. This approach is fairly contemporary and was introduced by Alice Waters at her famed Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley, ushering in new pleasures of the table that challenged French cooking. Being a chef, commands precise, accuracy, and elegance in pursuit of perfection. That is both the passion and trick.

Respecting perspective

I mentioned the need to adapt, and perhaps this is the most important aspect of the creative process of both architecture and cooking. For me, it allows the individual’s voice to speak, and to bring a particular perspective on how to cook and project in architecture. It is important to trust one’s own background and allow that milieu to influence all the senses, this will make a difference in the way a dish or a project is successfully executed. The value of hard work, and constantly exploring new avenues, leads to excellence in problem solving. Food has context, time, and place. Although there is never a single way to solve a problem, there are tools and techniques that need to be mastered.

Conclusion

Arguing that cooking has so much in common with architecture seems obvious. Both art forms are about pushing the boundaries while building on strong foundational techniques, embracing the new, while adjusting one’s sensitivity to the client’s. All of this should bring finesse and elegance to any project, balancing the disciplinary approach of the art of architecture with the need to resolve problems that are constantly evolving.

At the end, as for any art form, creating is about conveying a message. In a previous blog about thesis, I highlighted a chef’s four fundamental themes when creating a dish:

1. The dish has to be delicious
2. The dish has to be beautiful
3. Creativity: it’s important that every dish adds something to the dialogue of food today
4. Its intention: it needs to make sense that this dish exists.

The fourth theme always fills me with wonder. I hope I bring this point to my students.  

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