Second attempt / from the vending corridor to the dining desk

FROM THE VENDING TO THE DESK AND VICEVERSA
The space of transition from the "food supply" area (vending machine place) to the eating area (dining desk) is built by means of the physical material that link both parts. This material is the carpet.

The carpet that falls down through the dining desk holes as a fine linen tablecloth creates four tubes that suck up the office components to make a specific configuration on the desk (meal)
So, the meal, as a particular configuration using the high cuisine controlled structures, is an hybrid spatial propose for the corridor.
The vending corridor and the meal can be exchanged, both are the same structure with different configuration. The goal is to closed the cycle of desk, corridor, vending, corridor, desk.

Second attempt / dining desk

The dining desk is also a critic about the office eating bad habits. The desk is the usual place of eating in the office.
75% of office workers eat lunch at their desk 2 or 3 times a week
The keyboard has been proof to keep 150 times more bacteria that the toilet seat
This unhygienic and unhealthy habit, a part of the multitasking office workers everydayness, is here collide against a gourmet meal and a high profile restaurant's table.
The dining desk is build in term of a gourmet meal.
The plate contains the meal, a controlled and elaborated structure made of 4 vending springs fill of office components in a colour and form spatial composition.
This 4 springs are connected to the 4 holes of the desk. This number is related to the average of times workers use everyday the vending machines, as well as the number of courses of a traditional gourmet meal: aperitif, first course, main course and dessert.
The fork and the spoon are connected to the plate by USB, while the keyboard is integrated.
The food is supplied by the carpet. The carpet works here as a fine linen table cloth. It contains the spots of all the objects that have been on it.
The food is delivered through the four desk holes that instead of allowing wires to pass, allow the carpet to connect with the vending corridor.

Second attempt / vending corridor

In this second attempt, the components of the former exercise have been recombined with a new logic. The space does not need to follow its original structure. The structure, repetitive and impersonal, orthogonal and proportional, is new substituted by two different approaches.

VENDING CORRIDOR
In her virtual kitchen the corridor is built in term of the vending machine.
The architectonic components of the corridor, such as modular ceiling, office recessed radiance fluorescent lamps, office carpet, wall cladding, doors and partitions, are relocated using the storage structure of a common spring tray based vending machine (rombo 36 snack and Bevmax 45)
The vending corridor is a self-service of industrially manufactured cheap office components. This is a metaphor of the repetitiveness, triviality and impersonal standard office corridor.
Although the spring trays' structure is also repetitive and orthogonal, the geometry of the helix (spiral) and its movement alter the position of each component for each new turn.
These ever-changing positions give us the opportunity of breaking the conventional configuration of the corridor components and a spatial reconfiguration mixing different structures and components.
The hybridization is built in different levels:
Activity: chat (socialisation + shop)
Form-material: Ceramic vending tray structure + the corridor components
Typology: Corridor + Kitchen+ vending
Reality: Physical + Magical (Virtual)
The selected components are the cheapest or most common product of the following suppliers:
Carpets: Office manufacturers and Suppliers
Doors: Office partition.com
Lighting: Lighting directory.com (Thorlux and SCL)
Wall and Ceiling cladding: Proclad + Wallpanelling.ltd

Conclusion - First attempt Lemniscate Kitchen

In this first letter, that related to the activity of eating from the vending machines interpreted through the state of mind, rejection, of the character, the first attempt has consisted of:

- reinterpreting each component of the corridor

- becoming the vending machine into an architectural component of this space

- making an ever changing cluster of doors to take advantage of the similarity
between office corridors in the world as a critical attitude that can create the opportunity for a virtual space in the fictitious part of the narrative.

Once the components were separated and reinterpreted, I create a new space at once, and I simulated it digitally. This image was after fragmented and printed on different kind of papers. Then I started a process of cutting and pasting, a collage process using 3D simulated fragments.

CRITIC:

- The new space follows the same logic of the corridor that I am trying to distort so
the goal has not been achieved.

- It is based on floor, ceiling and walls in a traditional pictorial sense. That is not part of the XXIst century architectural expression but it is nearer to the XIXth. It should be a dream scape of the magical transformation of the office space but even if there are many interesting analysis, the idea is not spatially achieved.

- The characters, both daughter and father, need a fix position (profession) with specific consequences over the spatial feactures. The depiction I presented here has not that particular and specific features that it should.

- The analysis, interpretation and definition of components has been very fruitful
in order to develop a new interpretation, configuration and representation.

- The two key thing, those which are very important to my project are: The collision between vending and haute cuisine, the hybridization that has been undestood at different levels, such as form + material , eating + working (functions), corridor + kitchen (typologies), physical + virtual (realities)

- The technique has to be improved. It is necessary to find a way of using 3D imagery as a raw material to a collage in a more sophisticated way.

EVERDOOR CLUSTER 2

The everdoor cluster, as a component of the Lemniscate Kitchen, tries to invert the restrictions of office architectural production to create an opportunity to propose alternative spatial configurations.

As in a prison, where architecture is not only the fence between the freedom and the imprisonment, but also a kind of device of psychological torture, in an office, architecture has the goal of, first, separating the spare time and the working time, and second, offering the best possible working environment. This ideal of the working environment is not established by the employee but usually it is planned by the employer and designed by the architect.

Among the key features of an office space, the control of the employees is always important. The office environment has to be as neutral as possible to avoid distractions. The aesthetic of repetitiveness is a subliminal message for the expected attitude of the employee. Then, the fixed and impersonal architecture of offices is a clear reflection of the capitalist economic system and its market logic.

This architectural feature is here used as an opportunity. Most of the office building corridors in the world have carpet on the floor, modular false ceiling and a long succession of doors, so if you are put suddenly in any of them, it will be almost impossible to know where you are, even in which continent of the earth. For, this strong similarity is used to create an "office space exchanger". It allows to pass from any office space to another, inside the fiction of the narrative, in the content of the encoded letter that Nora, the character, drawn to her imprisoned father. This feature is a critical point about the rigidity of contemporary office space. If you can use this kitchen to get into any office space in the world, you are offered with a new freedom, but if all of them are so similar that even you do not notice almost any difference, this freedom does not matter, so, in this case it seems proper to use the famous statement of Sartre: "you are condemned to be free"

EVERDOOR CLUSTER 1

EVERDOOR CLUSTER
The cluster is made of units called HYBRID CANOPY. The Hybrid Canopy consists of a domestic door that has attached a residual office false ceiling.

Each door gives access to any office place in the world.
The ever-door cluster is located in the external part of the circumference.
Each hybrid canopy has a coordinates in the world that correspond to a location within the circumference, using a extrapolation of longitude and latitude. For example, a door located in New York has earth coordinates. The longitude is used to establish the point on the circumference, while the latitude is used to fix the elevation angle in the centre of the curve.

If you open a door you always find an office space with similar desks, partitions, carpets, cladding and curtain walls in the background. The paradox is based on the possibility of a myriad of different places that are very similar to each other.

Using uniquely images from some mass culture domestic catalogue of home items such as IKEA, ARGOS and TESCO, the Hybrid canopies are made of domestic objects using an office space logic, as a way to create an hybrid component to the Lemniscate Kitchen.

LEMNISCATE KITCHEN COMPONENTS

The leminiscate kitchen takes its name from the "lemniscate of Bernoulli" a plane double curve that is used also as a symbol to mean “infinite” in maths. It is a mnemonic title.
The kitchen is made of three different components located on the perimeter of a circumference with radius equal to that of the Ecuadorian radius of the earth.
Each component is a mixture between an stereotype office corridor, a Ikea kitchen, a vending machine, a supermarket and an industrial food chain.
The three components enclose partially a narrow space, a corridor that is apparently infinite because it is not possible to distinguish the curve.
These components are called as follow: THE VENDING WALL, THE EVERDOOR CLUSTER AND THE CARPETED CONVEYOR.

VENDING WALL
It is a stainless steel grid (as any industrial kitchen appliance) of equal cubic pigeon-holes that displays individual pieces of food such as carrots, onions, meat, fish, prawns, milk,....
Each cubic pigeon-hole is covered with a glass as if it would be the shop window of a jewellery, in this sense it is a Deluxe vending machine
The user selects the products and cook procedures or directy selects a dish of any restaurant in the world.
When the meal is ordered the vending wall starts removing each product in order to prepare your meal and after some minutes your meal is ready, packed in a cardboard box and sealed with a plastic cover.
This procedure is simulated, it seems that the vending wall is really using the products you select but it is just its skin, it is a superficial simulation, because your meal is made industrially behind the skin.
Once the vending wall has finished the meal, a drawer opens and an elevation mechanism rises a tray with your meal.

EVERDOOR CLUSTER
This cluster consists of units called HYBRID CANOPIES.
Each Hybrid Canopy consists of a domestic door that has attached a residual office false ceiling.
Each door gives access to any office place in the world.
The ever-door cluster is located in the external part of the curve.
Each hybrid canopy has a coordinates in the world that correspond to a location within the curve, using a extrapolation of longitude and latitude. This way depending on the meal you order in the vending wall you can go to eat it to any dinning desk in the world.


THE CARPETED CONVEYOR
A carpeted conveyor connects both former components
It transports you through the kitchen in order to select the products
For each selection of food, the ever-doors cluster is relocated, the hybrid canopies change their position according to the original coordinates of the products that are selected in the vending wall.
Each products coordinates are related to the doors coordinates, so depending on the meal you select, the unique frame-door of the cluster matches one of the doors. When this finally happens, the carpeted conveyor brings you to the exit door.

Imagining the Lemniscate Kitchen

“She imagines a long, almost infinite kitchen, as narrow as the office corridor. The kitchen is actually located on the perimeter of a circumference that has the same radius as that of the earth. On her right the wall is an endless vending machine, full of pigeon-holes protected with a glass where all kind of delicious raw food are individually displayed. The vending wall storages, cooks and serves whatever you want. You can even order a whole menu from Arzak or Subijana, three stars restaurants.

The rigid structure of the gridded vending wall contrasts with the cluster of multi-directional domestic doors that have attached a residual office false ceiling. Depending on what meal you order a door gives you access to a particular dinning desk placed in different parts of the world. The cluster of doors has only one frame-door that, once fixed to a door, allows you to leave the kitchen.

The floor of the kitchen is a carpeted conveyor, a residual office material that covers the transporting device of a industrial food chain, that moves you through the kitchen while you check and select the products as if it were a supermarket. Once the meal is ready it brings you directly to the exit door”

LETTER_1: LEMNISCATE KITCHEN

Mood: Feeling of Rejection
Activity: Food storage and cook
Real place: Vending machines office corridor
Fictitious place: Kitchen
Collision:
- Industrial food vs Haute Cuisine
- Vending machines Vs Three Stars Basque Restaurants
- Impersonal Office Space Vs Personal Domestic Space
Parallels:
- Office monotony Vs Kitchen everyday repetitiveness
- Vending machine snacks Vs Pre-cooked domestic food
- Industrial food chain Vs Kitchen furniture industrial production


Narrative: Feeling of Rejection in the Office Corridor

It it six o'clock in the evening and apparently most of the employees have already left the building after the hustle and bustle of the last twenty minutes. The floor 23 seems to be calm but Nora has to be careful not to commit any mistake. After approaching her ear to the door and having a stealthy look at the corridor she decides to buy some food in the vending machines.

The corridor of the floor is the stereotype of a 1980's boring and impersonal shabby office building. It is long, narrow and repetitive. Grey flecked carpeted flooring, beige and white modular false ceiling with fluorescent lamps and pale coloured walls. Actually, the corridor is circular and it is rounding the central core of staircases, service rooms and lifts. Against this wall are located the vending machines while the front wall, from which she has got into the corridor is full of doors. The corridor is so standard that you could be in any office building of any city in the world without being possible to identify it.

Nora is not very hungry but nonetheless she has to take advantage of her aloneness at night to get some provisions. With evident apathy she starts checking up the food from one vending machine to the other but all she finds is so dreadful, unhealthy and artificial that she turns around the circular corridor over and over with the naïve hope of coming across suddenly with a better option. She is getting dizzy and the machines and doors of the corridor seem to be growing in number with each new loop. Under a strong feeling of rejection for the terrible food options she starts making extremely unfair and outrageous comparisons between London office fast food habits and Basque cuisine culture. In a delirium between the hideous din of tacky coloured packs of precooked products and the “haute cuisine” tradition of Basque grand restaurants, she starts to imagine how to narrate to her father that corridor, her new eating habits and the absolute feeling of rejection while pretending not to worry him too much.