The Kitchen Café

Architecture Studio II

Under Senior Instructor Bill Holicky

Man’s primal instinct is to eat. Eating has evolved from a means of maintaining life to a form of beautiful artistic expression, reaching far beyond mere aesthetics. This evolution has been driven by the conception and practice of cooking; more precisely cooking socially. Designing a space to encompass this programme provided myself with a wonderful opportunity to explore this archaic tradition. In conception, I began to visualize this project as a chef would when igniting the burner at the commencement of constructing a feast. I assembled a faction of information in the form of site analysis as my primary ingredients and “cooked” them to produce an architectonic form which was made to: fit into the existing site restraints provided, express the historical attributes of the site, and reflect the idea of socialized cooking/community.

Site and Design Analysis

Ink on Mylar

“Space and light and order. Those are the things that men need just as much as they need bread or a place to sleep.” - Charles-Edouard Jeanneret ‘Le Corbusier’. Le Corbusier’s words echo evidently throughout the realm of architectural theory and its practices. Even in my own work, influence from his writings is evident. This becomes especially obvious throughout my design of The Kitchen Café, a contemporary communal dinning facility. An underlying design stratification when designing this project was to incorporate a previously studied ceiling concept into the existing condition. This specific covering approach was meant to, as Le Corbusier suggests, provide natural light to an artificial space by means of geometries and order.

Conceptual design of the indispensable ceiling system spawned as a direct result of external influence by Renzo Piano; specifically the daylighting system found in his Menil Collection Museum. His use of fabricated curves, known to many as "leaves," to transform direct light into diffused light, suited perfect for the provided program. Although a simplified version of Piano’s system, the ceiling integrated similar ferrocement louvers fabricated specifically for this particular method. The louvers were spaced evenly above the space and then enclosed at the exterior ends by a dual panel glazing system, making use of ultraviolet filtering glass and steel rails. In order to maximize the intake of natural daylight, the rails were positioned at the center of each louver rather than at their edge, where they would begin to enclose the openings and block daylight.

Further relevant to my ceiling devise is the mathematical order that provides the foundation to which this concept bloomed. Utilizing the site’s specific location, solar diagrams were used to calculate specific solar azimuth angles ranging from any time of the year to a precise degree. In order to make use of passive solar heating/cooling, the angle of each lever was set to exactly 26 degrees, the azimuth angle of the sun on the winter solstice. This allowed for diminutive light to penetrate the space during summer months and more light entering in the winter months, resulting in heat when needed and reflecting it when not needed.

First Floor Plan

Ink on Mylar

Second Floor Plan

Ink on Mylar

Longitudinal Section DD

Ink on Mylar

Longitudinal Section EE

Ink on Mylar

Space, light, order; each of these virtually impossible to accurately achieve through two-dimensional representation. In order to achieve these delegacies a physical product which can be turned, shifted, flipped, even destroyed, must be produced. Constructing this product out of monochrome basswood, brass, and aluminium supplied relatively stable material to allow light to reflect and highlight the space and its order on display. Using techniques taught from previous day lighting exercises, natural lighting could be simulated and analyzed to the exact date of observance.

The detail created by each sectional drawing provided the chance to literally cut through to the interior spaces, allowing visual access into the restaurants realm of conceptual spatial composition. Scattered coherently throughout the restaurant are designed points of phenomenology, both literally and figuratively, creating a lightness of transparency ordinarily uncommon to this archetype. Adding to its complexity in section, this prescribed phenomenology was carried vertically, rather than solely horizontally, into the restaurant’s second level which preserved The Kitchen Cafe’s original conception of programmatic separation and [The Upstairs]. The spatial composition of this project was as a direct result of the programmatic stratifications required for this delicate localisation. A setback was incorporated to allow for ample outdoor seating and to preserve the historical “residential setback” zoning of this site. The interior is systematically woven into the existing masonry building which was preserved centrally on the site. The plan was left open and unobstructed in order to allow for the creation of ambiguous and multi-use space.