Londonon, a reseach collaboration of six individual architectural practices, travelled to Paris in February 2019, embarking on a field trip to celebrate, observe, investigate, catalogue and question humanity’s relationship with food. Our contribution to Oslo Architecture Triennale reflects on this trip, taking a detailed look at the remarkable impact that the lifecycle of food has on the shaping of our culture, geography and the urban grain of cities worldwide. We have used Paris as a paradigmatic case study of a city with a unique role in world gastronomy that has food engrained at the very core of its being. The ambition of our study is to exhibit a forensic understanding of food production, distribution, preparation, consumption and waste by displaying the mapping of our own shared experience of the Parisian dinner table through mixed media.

A symbolic re-creation of the ‘Parisian Dinner Table’ presents facts, statistics, anecdotes and stories discovered throughout our Paris expedition and further explored in our London home. Our table is an invitation to celebrate the conviviality inherent in the sharing of food and to reflect upon the connections, human and environmental, that stem from food and our fundamental need to eat.