The family cook book Newcastle culture Lab

The ‘family cookbook’ created for the ambient kitchen (Olivier, P. et al, 2009) at Newcastle Culture Lab in 2008 a design object that mutates and evolves according to the activities of the user of the kitchen. This led to the creation of individual family cookbooks for potential users to log and narrate family narratives through recipes and kitchen stories. This illustrated for me how the combined activities of telling stories and physical making might provide a vehicle for exploring how social interactions, bonding and individual identities are formed, create and perpetuate cultural traditions and memory.

The cookbook in Greek tradition is an object that is often inherited from one’s mother when starting a new family, a cultural signifier of the emotional and social importance attached to preparing food, eating and gathering around the table in maintaining a happy family. As in many cultures, family recipes are symbolic objects closely connected with place and time echoing histories and revealing roots. Thus the ‘family cookbook’ design aimed to provide.