philadelphia PENNSYLVANIA
Penn Design
Critic: Nate HUME
suckerPUNCH: Describe your project.
Katie LANSKI and Daniel SILVERMAN: Mother Culture considers a “both, and” condition through food and design, exploring ‘the raw and the cooked (and the rotten)’, ‘the familiar and the unfamiliar’, and ‘the digital and the analog’.
- Katie LANSKI and Daniel SILVERMAN, “Mother Culture.”, Section
- Katie LANSKI and Daniel SILVERMAN, “Mother Culture.”, Plan
- Katie LANSKI and Daniel SILVERMAN, “Mother Culture.”, Model Photo
- Katie LANSKI and Daniel SILVERMAN, “Mother Culture.”, Model Photo
- Katie LANSKI and Daniel SILVERMAN, “Mother Culture.”, Model Photo
- Katie LANSKI and Daniel SILVERMAN, “Mother Culture.”, Model Photo
Mother Culture is a public market + production space housing, studying, and cultivating herbs, spices, and mother-cultures. Inspired by a recent resurgence and appreciation of food as a part of culture, rather than food as purely caloric sustenance, Mother Culture explores food at its essence, through «starters» (i.e. mother yeast, kefir, etc) and «finishers» (i.e. herbs and spices). This living archive reimagines the possibility of the cohabitation of these «starters» and «finishers» to procreate new culinary potentials in the realms of breadmaking, yogurt elaboration, pickling, and other forms of fermentation.
sP: What or who influenced this project?
KL & DS: From the onset of this studio (“MADLab”, led by Nate Hume), we were excited to think about how food and food culture shapes and can be shaped by architecture. Primarily, we were intrigued and influenced by the shift in food culture in the last decade (+/-), which has recently culminated in an outward appreciation, bordering on fetishization, of many aspects of food in today’s society; from its productions and origins, to its taste and how it is presented. This fetishization can be traced from haute cuisine (i.e. El Bulli and Dans Le Noir) to the use, production, and storage of everyday items (i.e. homemade cultures, The Puratos Sourdough Library in Belgium, and the Mother Culture Hotel in Sweden).
We drew inspiration from a number of sources, some being more accidental than others. We found Sylvia Lavin’s writings on “The Raw and the Cooked” to be provocative and influential in the way we thought through our designs, while the unintentional inspirations spanned from finding kombucha on tap in a local Philly café to a relative sharing their new kefir obsession.
As we further researched and explored, it wasn’t necessarily the flavor or the nutritional value of food that influenced us, but rather the stories of relationships, traditions, and cultural significance that many have through food, its preparation, and its dissemination.
Ultimately, this project is a culmination of our experiences and explorations in studios at PennDesign, UVa, and Taubman College (UofM), and is therefore influenced by our previous professors as well.
sP: What were you reading/listening to/watching while developing this project?
KL & DS: Here are some raw ingredients that helped us during the cooking of this project:
An even mixture of “The New York Times: Food”, “The Raw and the Cooked” (Lavin), and “Subnatures” (Gissen)
A splash of Enrique Iglesias, Frankie Cosmos, Glass Animals, and Darlingside
A sprinkle of “Invisibilia”, “The Moth”, “Strangers”, and “This American Life”
A pinch of “Understanding the Material Practices of Glamour” (Thrift) and “The Weird and the Eerie” (Fisher)
A dollop of any and every British comedy on Netflix and Prime, “Schitt’s Creek”, and “The Standups”
sP: What work is currently on your radar?
KL & DS: There’s a number of artists and architects that have been on our radar recently. We have been intrigued and inspired by Talbot & Yoon, Snarkitecture, Iwan Pol, Snohetta, Assembly, Norman Kelly, and Clark Thenhaus, to name a few.
