Have you ever enjoyed a meal together with friends and strangers alike?
Can you imagine a square hosting a big table that neighbours share for dinner in summer nights?
Is it possible to raise awareness and fight food waste by launching a public banquet prepared out of leftovers?
In recent years numerous initiatives worldwide have arisen using food to challenge the way people engage in urban public spaces. Combining various backgrounds such as art, architecture, activism or anthropology, this interventions have been put into practice without any commercial purpose but holding multiple intentions that range from enjoyment and celebration to education or political protest.
City Cook Book is a collection of initiatives enhancing public spaces by bringing people together through food culture. It aims to explore how food can be an effective tool to both transform our common spaces into sites for encounter and social interaction, as well as to engage with larger issues that shape our everyday urban life. Through its digital platform and its print-it-yourself publication, City Cook Book intents to visualize this phenomena, reflect upon it and inspire other initiatives.
contact[at]citycookbook.org
City Cook Book is a non-profit initiative developed by Claudia Sánchez and Íñigo Cornago.
This web and publication has been designed by ereslomastumas and programmed by Andrés Sedano.
Proyecto financiado por Ayudas Creación Injuve
Project funded by Ayudas Creación Injuve
in each project or by choosing it from the following list.If you prefer to print any content as single PDFs, you can just click 
COMMUNAL BAKERY is a system that provides facility for the production of bread. A copy of COMMUNAL BAKERY can be established in any local community where persons want to share the activity of producing bread.
COMMUNAL BAKERY is constructed mainly from plywood plates or similar. It can easily be assembled by anybody with a minimum of building experience. It consists of six basic modules: Storage unit for baking ingredients, storage unit for kitchen tools, sink unit (possibly with water tanks), oven unit, bread cooling unit and one unit of flexible space. The oven needed for the system could be a recycled standard oven powered by gas or electricity depending on local options. The COMMUNAL BAKERY can be situated both inside existing buildings or outdoors. A central lighting element provides a minimum of light during night time.
Concentrations of power control most means of production. As a result persons are being alienated from the most basic processes related to maintaining everyday life. In this case the baking of bread. Often the production of bread takes place in large-scale industrialised settings far removed from the tactile process originally associated with hands making bread. This causes increased pollution due to the need for transportation, and the centralisation of production in large facilities increases the risk of persons being exploited. The complex nature of the method of production increases the distance between producer and consumer and makes it more likely that consequences are not considered and consumers do not feel responsible. Concentrations of power force persons to concentrate on participating in competition and power games in order to create a social position for themselves. Concentrations of power are nourished by the illusion that competition is better than collaboration. It is necessary to collaborate and share means of production if we want to organise ourselves in as small concentrations of power as possible.
N55 suggests that local agreements are made on how to use the COMMUNAL BAKERY. Persons in one area might agree to buy a shared amount of ingredients or prefer to bring ingredients separately and just share the COMMUNAL BAKERY itself.
N55 works with art as a part of everyday life.
N55 is a platform for persons who wants to work together, share places to live, economy, and means of production.
N55 is based both in Copenhagen, and in LAND.
N55 is financed by selling durable, environmentally and socially sustainable products, based on homemade Open Source systems and by exhibitions, grants and educational work.