GourmetLive: The Architecture of Food

Luckily for me, since I don’t own an iPad (or an iPhone, for that matter, which has begun to make me seem like a freak) my first story for GourmetLive is now online. When asked if there was anything to write about design and food this instantly came to mind.

Jam-making jams, fertilized grow pockets, edible schoolyards, skyscraper farms. Every day my Twitter feed, nominally devoted to design, architecture and media, brings me a stream of architectural platings. I see packaging that becomes a food bowl, sidewalks that sprout, bananas with logos. Right behind the question Why Design Now? — the theme of this year’s National Design Triennial — appears the question What to Eat Now? And designers seem to be throwing themselves at the answer for many of the same reasons. Now that we know we produce too much waste, now that aesthetics are suspect, now that we must compost or perish, how do design and architecture retool themselves for less, or better, or tastier consumption?

Well, we all have to eat.

Read the rest “The Architecture of Food” here.

And since, as Khoi Vinh just pointed out, iPad apps aren’t linky. Let me provide some. The main projects I discuss aren’t brand new: Coolhaus, Edible Schoolyard New York, EATLACMA, Marije Vogelzang, but I felt no one had yet written about why such disparate design practices have taken up with food (and not just on GOOD). The short answer is, we all love it. Except for the parents with an unhealthy relationship to ice cream, juice and chocolate milk.

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By Alexandra Lange

Alexandra Lange is an architecture critic and author, and the 2025 Pulitzer Prize winner for Criticism, awarded for her work as a contributing writer for Bloomberg CityLab. She is currently the architecture critic for Curbed and has written extensively for Design Observer, Architect, New York Magazine, and The New York Times. Lange holds a PhD in 20th-century architecture history from New York University. Her writing often explores the intersection of architecture, urban planning, and design, with a focus on how the built environment shapes everyday life. She is also a recipient of the Steven Heller Prize for Cultural Commentary from AIGA, an honor she shares with Design Observer’s Editor-in-Chief, Ellen McGirt.