Critical Paranoia

Designing Human: Exploiting the interrelationship between the human digestive system and its social organization.

2016 Columbia GSAPP - Studio Project Professor. M. Joaquim S. Moreno

 The human jaw is a marvelous device; it can generate up to 1600 newtons of force. Teeth, in their best conditions, can utilize only 700 of those 1600 newtons. The human teeth are the limitations of the jaw’s physical capabilities.

The chewing machine transcends us beyond those limitations. The machine takes advantage of all 1600 newtons of force that our jaw can generate without using the teeth. The liberation of the jaw allows the chewing machine to redirect the excess energy that one normally deployed on chewing gum and transforms it into electrical energy. Each individual chew can generate up to 10.8W of energy, which will be used to cook food. The kitchen becomes a place where different ingredients are stored, while the operations would be performed in the chewing machines. Eating together becomes a process of cooking together. The chewing machine allows individuals to cook personally.

Alongside with those liberations the machine brings limitation by eliminating parallel processing, a common practice used in contemporary kitchens. The introduction of cooking infrastructure negates this limitation. With the infrastructural machine complex dishes can be cooked by choreographing the operation of several valves. The valves will control food input, mixture and intake. Cooking becomes a social event, where the number of people involved will reduce the time spent on cooking and increase the complexity of food cooked.

In the society where cooking/eating together is essential, a special communal kitchen would be needed. The kitchens would control the food and people flow to ensure the food safety. Each communal kitchen would have its own master chef who will choreograph the operation of the valves to bring the best food to the people and make sure of food safety.