Wilrose Pingol

Advisor: Lisa Landrum

collage of drawings
Collage of components of a meal.
“Contents on the Table” – Layered collage of components used throughout preparing and eating meals. Vary in opacity representing prominence and retreat of parts, an ephemeral event.
Table as a platform for ephemeral events.
“A Meal’s Performance” – Before, during, and after. The table is a platform supporting ephemeral events.
Site plan.
“Gathering and Farming Sites” – Sites situated by the river and Fraserview-Killarney neighbourhood aims to transform former industrialized land and reclaim the space for growing and celebrating food traditions for the local Filipino immigrant communities.
Proposed growing groups of vegetables.
“Food Web and Companion Growing” – Proposed growing groups of vegetables that safely cultivates both speciality Filipino crop and local native crops to support the local economy. The farm will help develop deeper understanding of food and reinforce forgotten traditions experienced after immigrating to a new country.
Gathering pavilions.
“A parade of canopies” – Gathering pavilions are organized across the site to mimic the procession of food and vegetables during harvest, meals and vessels on the table, parades of people and activities on city streets, in a way that bridges connection of the public street and reclaim the monetized river as public waters.
Diagram of the day-to-day use.
“Community Pavilions” – A comparison of the day-to-day use and event use of the pavilions on site. Activities include communal dining and cooking stations, plaza for small performances, vegetable and rice processing and storage facilities, as well as multi-purpose shelters to support overflow of activities.
Materials and methods of the super structures.
“The Material” – The materials and methods incorporate both super structures, through the re-purposing of steel barge frames, and community-led building components like clay tiles and metal roof shingles, gabion seating and retaining structures, and the creation of traditional reed mats for shade and wind protection.


The Feast of an Architectural Space
 

Food and ritual have been celebrated since time immemorial. Many societies view ritual feasts as the source of life and link it with higher powers. The word feast derives from the Latin word festus, meaning festive or joyful. It presents a time for renewal, gratitude and to share the bounty with many. The purpose of this study is to explore how rituals of dining can generate community interactions and collective happiness to inform the design of public space and exercise capacity building for a minority community.

Analyzing contents of a dining table indicate histories of tradition understood through configurations of shared meals, ingredients, tools and utensils, vessels, and prepared dishes. In an essay called “Table Talk,” David Leatherbarrow points to the diverse spatial qualities of the meal as something incredibly valuable1. From one culture to another, the table supports multiple dining customs. In the procession of preparing and sharing a meal, we can map out the “perceptual prominence” that speaks to the temporality of the event, presenting individual proponents at moments in time as part of the collective experience. 

The performative characteristics of the table is also legible at the scale of a feast in the city. Each year thousands of people in the Philippines gather and participate in street and fluvial processions as relics travel across the city to bring good fortune. Competitions are held with participating households decorating and reimagining the city’s visual landscape. And finally, the village feast takes place where all are invited to dine collectively. The streets become a place of performance, transaction, and festivities.

For many immigrant families, the practice of traditional cooking and feasting is often the only connection to their former lives. It is my intention to propose a framework that supports rituals of dining and celebration of harvest for the Filipino-Canadian community in the City of Vancouver, providing sites to establish cultural identity and to strengthen community bonds in a diverse and multi-cultural context. 

The project also aims to reinforce a culture of sharing to counter the individualistic and hedonistic values of modern society, which has led to the major decline of Earth’s resources and has caused detrimental effects to the natural environment. Explorations through this study emphasize the importance of enriching community life not only through humanized design but also through understanding how our behaviours affect social, cultural, and ecological change.

 

 

1 David Leatherbarrow, “Architecture oriented otherwise” (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2009), 123.