Initiatives / Experiments / Visions

Tischlein Deck Dich

Principal author

Vitamin Architects

Profession

architect

Co-authors (team members)

Alexandra Trofin, Raoul Chirichș, Pataki Farkas, Paul Buchert, Rudolf Gräf, Lavinia Popa, Cristina Râmneanțu

Architecture office

Vitamin Architects

External collaborators

Vienna Design Week team, Kias Oliveira, Community Cooking, Habibi&Hawara restaurant, Afgan boys

Project year

2017

Location

Vienna - Braunhirschenpark

Client

Vienna Design Week

Project description

Stadtarbeit is a format developed within VIENNA DESIGN WEEK that offers designers the chance during the festival to take part in a project dealing with social design. The projects take place partly in cooperation with Caritas Wien and are realized during the festival. For 2017 edition, Tischlein Deck Dich was one of the submitted projects at the open call for Stadtarbeit. The project explores the multicultural character of gastronomy, while creating an opportunity for interaction between social groups of different origins, offering the work frame for expressing cultural identity through the culinary art in the public space of Vienna. In order to achieve our goals, we have designed and built a movable kitchen. It was assembled in Vienna, the assembly workshop gathered architecture students willing to participate in a hands-on activity. The main site chosen to activate was Braunhirschenpark, located in the 15th district of Vienna, the focus area of VIENNA DESIGN WEEK 2017, however, during the week spent in Vienna, some of the Tischlein Deck Dich events occurred in other places as well, like Café Prosa – an association that usually organize educational events for foreign teenagers, Werkstadt 15 – an alternative creative hub, Technisches Museum and Romanian Cultural Institute headquarters. This project was mostly about networking and experience sharing, using a common need – food – as a binder. We started the cooking workshops with a Romanian day organized by ourselves at Café Prosa. A traditional fish soup was cooked – the smell and the Romanian music played in the background made a lot of people curious about the event. It ended up in a party, new connections have been made and diversity in lifestyle has been presented. People were invited to answer some questions regarding their opinion on multiculturality using a questionnaire. More than 90% of the people who answered to our questions said that they feel like being global citizens. Similar with the first event followed the others – an Afgan day coordinated by two young boys living in a refugee home, a Brasilian cooking afternoon, another oriental cooking workshop and a couple of parties.

Text description of the author

We are an architecture office based in Timișoara, Romania, with a focus on user friendly architecture and sustainable urban planning. Our team is often completed by external specialists and collaborators, building up multidisciplinary teams for projects on conservation of built heritage and urban planning. We believe in cities for people, in public space as a social and identity value of urbanism. Another main interest in our activity is conversion and rehabilitation of built heritage. We like to work with and for people, avoiding loss in exploitation and ensuring the sustainability of our projects. Also we participate with pleasure in cultural and educational projects.

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