[uno]

Seeing as nearly everyone I know is a designer of some sort, I thought I would start by relating how food is simply another medium of art and to fully appreciate design you must be able to recognize this.

My whole life I have been attracted to activities that allow you to join together seemingly discontinuous things and form something completely new that can achieve things not one of its parts could achieve singularly. This attraction is what eventually led me to architecture. Before architecture there was a drawing, painting, sculpture, but first there was cooking. In cooking you take these completely separate ingredients that make something new and beautiful, like bread. Who would ever guess that wheat, yeast bacteria and water could make something so amazing? Same for painting- an assemblage of whatever pigments are made out of and canvas could make something like Dali’s melted clock? And of course architecture, stone, steel and wood into an artful multi level structure able to withstand an earthquake, what? It took creative ingenuity to put these components together, fulfill a new function, and make a completely separate entity. In the same way that paint is a medium for art, food is also a medium for art. Likewise to art and architecture, similar considerations are taken in cooking- form, hierarchy, juxtaposition and layering, just to name a few. I think the most obvious example of this that most everyone has experienced is with sushi. As a food, sushi so genuine and true to its minimal ingredients. The type of fish determines how it is cut. The color, shape and size of the plate it is served on depends on the type of fish and what accompaniments it. So as a designer next time you are eating think about why the food is the way it is, what logic and thought went into how it was made, why it was prepared the way it was, and why it looks the way it does. You will find that there are many layers that are often over looked and under appreciated.