MADPLATZ
Project Brief:
The second assignment asked us to design a community culture cooking school for the Hans Tavsens Park, located in the Nørrebro neighborhood of Copenhagen, Denmark. This space required spaces for a public kitchen, cafe, staff offices, and a breakout room; it was to be the new "living room" of the area.
Concept:
Food is a universal idea; everyone and everything in this world needs some form of nourishment to stay alive. It allows both unity and separation to occur: everyone understands the idea of food, but everyone learns and grows in that idea differently; food merges identities together but it also distinguishes one identity from another; it symbolizes tradition and stringency, but also freedom and creativity. Since this project asks for a space revolving around food -- a culture cooking school with a cafe -- Madplatz aims to embed these characteristics within the space. It hopes to combine food’s universality with the Hans Tavsens location in bringing not only the diverse Nørrebro community, but also the separate school student, cemetery visitor, and daily commuter group together. This is done through three main elements: connectivity, fluidity, and humility.
- Connectivity: As food connects people, the structure is based on a main pathway/base that grounds all of the functions. It creates a separation and thus individuality for each purpose, but it still sustains the togetherness of not only food, but also community.
- Humility: However complex a dish may be, when broken down everything comes from a seed in soil. This shows the simplicity that grounds food, and to convey this, Madplads is built from basic, understandable shapes: squares. The space does not need unimaginable curves to serve its purpose in bringing people together over food. Further, the humility of the structure makes the space less intimidating and more inviting for its community.
- Fluidity: To grow food, there has to be many seamless transitions and relationships to occur...food is more a process than a product. To represent this, Madplads attempts to erase walls and instead create a fluid inside-outside relationship between the built and surrounding spaces. This is specifically done with the large use of glazing, sliding doors, and courtyards that literally bring the outside inside. Additionally, Madplads aims to be a part of the park rather than its own separate entity. To do this, creating as loose a boundary between the structure and surroundings is crucial.
**please excuse picture quality below...I am currently working with only pdfs and am in process of fixing this situation.
