Research for Design: Nishiki Market and Food of Kyoto

Summary
Nishiki Market has long been known as the center of food culture in Kyoto, delivering ingredients of the highest quality to prominent Ryotei restaurants in areas such as Gion. However, with its increase in popularity as a sight-seeing spot, Nishiki Market recently has began to experience cultures and sights different from before.
KYOTO Design Lab [D-lab] has held workshops from 2015 to 2017 that explore the relationship between food and city through students’ field works in Nishiki Market and proposal in response to them. When reconsidering Kyoto’s food culture through rigorous research, it became clear that there exist various systems that do not directly relate to food but have an immense influence on it, such as ecosystems, cultural behaviour, city’s infrastructure that gives birth to production, distribution and consumption and the twenty-four seasons in the Japanese lunar calendar that are underlying concept for the said systems.
This exhibition shows not only research on the food of Kyoto and Nishiki Market but also design proposals that express new interpretations of there twenty-four seasons.

バーゼル大学のマニュエル・ヘルツ教授（写真左）とシャディ・ラーバラン氏の指導のもと、京都の食文化を調査したUnder the guidance of Professor Manuel Herz, University of Basel (left) and Shadi Rahbaran, we surveyed the food culture in Kyoto
photo: Tomomi Takano

錦市場でのリサーチの様子Field research in Nishiki Market
photo: Kanako Takimoto

京都中央卸売市場でのリサーチの様子Field research in Kyoto Central Wholesale Market
photo: Tomomi Takano