Culinary Cultures

Abstract

"Culinary Cultures" understands the dietary story of Gibraltar, as well as the way in which it incorporates relevant change. A new food culture is developed from production to consumption across the peninsula and over time, gradually alleviating Gibraltar’s culinary life. "Culinary Cultures" introduces a change in the familiar setting of the Public Market, highlighting particularities that it already offers, aiming to smoothly imbue the shift in the local culture. Making people aware becomes then a strategy to shrink the current ratio of obesity and overweight residents that affects three out of five Gibraltarians. The purge of the current “effortless” street food culture should be an invitation for participation, resulting in an understanding of what we should consume and how. Gibraltar’s expected population doubles by 2050 and becomes even more diverse in terms of the nationalities living in the territory. As a result, its survival depends on the maintenance of its differences, and even its further differentiation. Incorporating new dietary habits and dining settings of people from northern Africa and east Asia becomes the new challenge. Within the scenario of the local food production around this infertile land, architecture in relation to food has the chance to alter its current consequential condition. Food and dining should not take place in generic spaces that happen to be there, but in spaces created to host them and enhance a coherent food culture across the territory. The ritual of eating in "A Gibraltar in the Making" is an integral part of the coastline and even the sea, materializing in a multilayered scenario from production to consumption. The “Vessel Food” becomes a symbolic place to dine with friends, where the production and preparation of food takes place in a performative manner in front of consumers. In a contemporary urbanized society like Gibraltar, cooking provides one chance most people have of taking some control over what they eat. Cooking is not just about what goes on in the kitchen, it is a pivotal point in the food chain—the one that arguably affects everything else in it. Cooking, like talking and writing, requires education— and like these essential skills, it comes easily once you know how.