The meal is an act that is played out, in which everyone plays a role, but it is also an art that can be put at a distance. It is thus the subject of many pictorial, cinematographic and literary representations. In painting, and particularly in Mannerism, Italian art of the 16th century, the illustration of myths or visions depict a dreamlike perception of this imagery in a treatment of colors, bodies and materials. Yet frozen, these pictorial scenes abound with signs and details that prefigure a movement. The spatial stasis of the painting's surface allows one to imagine its temporal narrative in an architectural plane. His drawing then depicts the spatial limits of the meal, whether vegetal or architectural. The table is the unit of measurement that allows the paintings to be put on the same scale.
The representation of the Last Supper is not fixed, it evolves over the centuries. Indeed, today, the dining room, as a profane place of daily life, can become the place of a dramatization of this ritual. Sacralizing the meal brings to place its action in the center of the house in the architectural design. The analysis focused on three private residences, each of which asserts itself as a theatrical projection of daily life. The three dining rooms of Victor Horta, Adolf Loos and Mies Van der Rohe allowed us to sketch different volumetrics and thicknesses that will act as spatial frames and supports. Three envelopes define the surfaces available to welcome the event materialized by the different meals borrowed from the pictorial scenes. Enclosing a piece of the painting in a room materializes the physical form of the pictorial frame and gives it new spatial, physical and material limits.
The numerous references, both pictorial and literary, have guided the narrative to the theme of Eden, commonly called the Garden of Delights. It is indeed the place of the first original sin, namely that of having picked the forbidden fruit. The abundance and the delight confronted with the human vices personify, in my opinion, the image of the meal. The theme of the garden led me to start from its generic term, which is the idea of an enclosed paradise, a haven of peace distinguished from a chaotic and untamable world. The image of the fence and the enclosure leads to transpose the principle of Hortus Conclusus in the medieval city. The analogy between the garden and the city places them both as fragments, terrestrial samples of enclosure in which humans recluse themselves to protect themselves but also to develop culture and activities. Thus, the city would be, like the garden, a microcosm arranged in pieces, whose toponymy governs its uses. This led me to elaborate an experimental protocol starting from the plan of the city of Rennes with its ramparts, to miniaturize it, to extract from it traces and by collage to lead to a general plan.
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