GUILLERMO ARANDA-MENA

MIELE KITCHEN CONCEPT COMPETITION [Melbourne - 2016] The Timelessness of ‘Forever Better’ by Guillermo Aranda-Mena Image 1: Imagine yourself at the beginning of time when mankind was about to invent his first tool; a simple tool to survive, prepare, eat... Imagine yourself when fire was discovered and the first dishes prepared - the first simple hearths - the precursors to the Miele ideal. Image 2: Fast forward and imagine a time when agriculture provided means to end the nomadic lifestyle and to set up a place that was the home, and at the centre the family hearth - the stove, the kitchen - Miele. Image 3: Imagine now The Renaissance, where in the true sense of ‘Forever Better’ the kitchen continues to grow, where in castles the 14 course wedding banquet was pivotal in cementing an alliance between a ruling family in a yet to be united Italy and a monarchy in Spain or France. Here are the first commercial kitchens where the ideals of efficiency, performance, desig...

'What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others' ' Pericles' Pericles might be right but architecture is defined by its materiality , starting from ideas, briefing documents into sketches and drawings, contractor, specialist consultants come on board and the list carries on endlessly. No architect achieves fulfillment until all his/her efforts eventuate into  engraved  stone monuments!  There are no short cuts, there is no way around... the thought of 'to build or not to build'  often troubles my mind.  In an attempt to reconcile my teaching practice with the making  of buildings I need to accept a degree of separation, the proximity between me and those creators of   stone monuments such as students, friends and colleagues is very close indeed. In my view such degree of separation seems like an abysmal divide ...   a bridge is to unfold though. GAM - 1st May 2011 ...