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
If you prefer to print any content as single PDFs, you can just click
The market square is a place of social gathering and exchange but very often this takes place only during the actual market hours. We wanted to extend this event and increase the awareness of the constant social potential of the site. The idea was to lead over the energy from the market into a dinner for the neighbourhood and invite everyone to exchange their news over a meal or get to know each other.
Shortly before the end of the weekly market, we asked the traders to donate some food for our common dinner. We got vegetables, fruits, cheese, eggs or meat. The given food would not be firm or fresh on the next market days and therefore waste, yet it was perfect for the day. The only tools we brought were: a stove, some pots, paper plates and cutlery. The table and the seats were improvised out of empty cardboard boxes also from the market. While the market traders start to remove their booths, we slowly start to build up the donation dinner. We cooked several meals and everybody was invited to join the dining table. We were cooking and eating together until all leavings were gone. In the end the empty table stays as a sculptural installation and an invitation to proceed.
We are an international collective of architects and focus our work on the forgotten and unused resources of our cities. The name „Guerilla Architects“ evolved through a squatting experience in London in 2012. Questioning the socio-economical structures of the cities and the role and responsibility of architecture connects our group until today. We focus on unconventional subversive transformations of public spaces. We are a collective of makers, theorists and planners who range in between the fields of urban planning, built and temporary architectures, art, cultural history and theater. We come from Germany, Italy and Bulgaria and are based in Berlin, Göttingen, Sofia, and London.
Guerilla Architects are Anja Fritz, Silvia Gioberti, Tobias Hattendorff, Denica Indzova, Henriette Lütcke, Nike Kraft, Benedikt Stoll, Lucie Waschke, Sophie Fetten and Eric Zapel.