Floris Koelink

Spijslokaal

Food hall

Architecture, landscape and gastronomy connect and strengthen us and each other.

With this graduation project, it has been my goal to bring my two passions together; cooking and architecture. I did this within the idea of designing the Academy of Gastronomy. The Academy is essential because food is of great importance in our daily lives, simply because it keeps us alive. However, not everyone is yet aware of how it is consumed within our society, let alone enough awareness of how and where our food is produced. This has many different causes, proper education is one of them, teaching a new generation how things can be done differently. From education, the next step can be taken to create change; innovation. Ultimately, education and innovation go hand in hand as they continue to feed off each other. Thus, old concepts can be reconsidered and brought together with new innovations. This allows 'the new food' to evolve.  

And that is the essence; preparing a new generation of chefs, and translating that vision of gastronomy into architecture.   

The Academy of Gastronomy is the result of this; the intention is to get future chefs more involved with nature. To focus on this, the course is divided into two disciplines, one that focuses on preparation and one that focuses on production. So the future chefs will also have their hands in the earth and go out into the landscape to search for new products and new flavours. The buildings and landscape will inspire and facilitate this in their own way to ensure contact with nature and the seasons, in a place where landscape and building work together to reinforce each other.    

This will take place in 's-Graveland, about 20 kilometres from Amsterdam . 's-Graveland is characterised by its elongated plot structure along the east-west axis. These plots are the result of sand mining. Sand was excavated here and transported by barge via the zanderij canals to Amsterdam, among other places. At the same time, a number of plots were used for buitenplaatsen, here gardens and houses were built according to mostly Renaissance ideas. Long lines reinforce the elongated plot structure. These human interventions have created an exciting whole between open and dense by alternating gardens, fields and woods. Within the whole, one buitenplaats in particular stands out: Bantam. This estate does not participate in the east-west structure but is located on a sandy area that was added a few years later. This added sand field, the Naarderveld, lies on the north-south axis. In addition, this is the only buitenplaats whose country house was demolished and nothing was ever built in its place. However, the landscaped garden, forest and field have remained intact. This interesting play combined with the difference in altitude created by the sand bars is an interesting breeding ground for the Academy of Gastronomy. 
 

Graduation date: 23 August 2022
Graduation committee: Geurt Holdijk (mentor), Mathias Lehner, Kim Kool 
Additional members for the exam: Bastiaan Jongerius, Furkan Kose