- New alliances
Design knowledge is full of jargon and can be inaccessible, making it hard for citizens to reclaim their agency in design and planning in the city. ‘Sourdough Architecture’ explores how the everyday knowledge of feeding and baking sourdough could open up discussions on design and ecology to other experts and broader public, necessary to address contemporary challenges. Sourdough is selected because it is analogous to design and already embodies the collective trend of coping with COVID19 and various structures of kinship and intergenerational care, trespassing the institutional mode of knowledge exchange. The themes were explored through dinner parties that were based on the weekly sourdough feeding prompts, which concluded in an experimental documentary and an open collective library on are.na. Feeding prompts dealt with specific flour (material) and conditioning (environment) to grow the starter, to be baked and discussed with designers, farmers, anthropologists, and scientists.
'Sourdough Architecture’ explores how the everyday knowledge of feeding and baking sourdough could open up discussions on design and ecology to other experts and broader public, necessary to address contemporary challenges.
Sourdough Architecture' is the extension of an architecture thesis with the same title. While the architecture thesis focuses on the sourdough starter as a metaphor to reimagine material processes in architecture based on natural entanglements and decay, the dinner parties emphasize on the anthropological process of decolonizing architectural knowledge itself through the use of everyday languages (i.e. language of bread).
The themes were explored through dinner parties that were based on the weekly sourdough feeding prompts, which concluded in an experimental documentary and an open collective library.
Participants find a weekly feeding prompt that experiments with specific flour (material) and home conditioning (environment) to grow the starter from instagram. We would then bake breads, to be eaten and discussed with our featured guests, including designer, anthropologist, environmental scientist during the events.
Occasional reading and screening of documentaries as well as the work of our participants.
