Communal Cooking Culinary School

Location: Litauens Plads, Copenhagen

Program: Cooking School

Type: Academic, Individual

Litauens Plads is run down, and although it was recently renovated in 2016 a certain grimey atmosphere lingers. Despite this, the plaza is extremely popular with locals as many families spill out from the surrounding buildings to barbecue and drink here during the summer. Children from the nearby school and daycare fill the site after school as they run around, waiting for their parents. The insertion of a culinary school would take precious space from them so the decision to sink the project was made very early in the design process.

Freestanding stone walls above and an underground culinary school below were designed as the task of reconciling the two was created. Where the walls divide, expand, connect, shrink scale, provide privacy, and direct circulation; the underground school gives back to the community, triggers intrigue, creates quiet spaces, shields from the elements, directs attention, and celebrates the individual in relation to food.

One of the biggest motivating images for this project was the light shining on the basil that sat on my desk while I worked. There is something primal and comforting about working with one’s back to a wall, with a bright light shining on greenery in a dimly lit room. I attempted to capture this feeling and respect for food within the culinary school.

The image of children playing and in a ruin, a corpse of a long forgotten society, moved me. Children have the innate ability to make the best of what is available and the walls boil down what they need to the bare essential: namely a separation between the known and uknown, a call to adventure. The walls directly grow out of the voids, gently declaring the presence of the culinary school to nearby pedestrians.

Walls maximize light into the project and encourage overall flow. They draw people inward, direct others down, divide up the space, and provide a canvas on which the light from the school can shine onto. By revealing only a part an entire world is implied.

Courtyards were placed such that each room had a minimum of two light sources. Moveable kitchen islands free up the central space. Promenade through a rhythm of light and dark as green courtyards are placed just out of reach, drawing the curious ever inward.