“The workshop is a dream come true. A place to solely create.”
”The main thing is systemization. When something is systemized, it brings true revolution”
Ferran Adria – considered one of the greatest chefs ever – seems to have sussed out two things:
– Right space (the space is the tool)
– Right language (clarity + patterns)
Then:
The dream comes true.
It’s relevant because I often hear people say that if you can run a restaurant, you can run anything. It’s a business that is permanently losing money when you’re not making money. It also has immediate leading feedback loops if the product is poor: the food comes back to the kitchen, and people don’t come back to the restaurant. The opposite is also true: there’s immediate feedback for positive improvements, bookings go up, people return. For someone to build up their restaurant to a level whereby it is considered to be one of the best (i.e. revolutionary, creative, innovative) restaurants in the world, is an extraordinary feat.
It was the revolution in the workshop and systemization that Ferran considered to be his breakthrough and the legacy he left to the world of cooking.
I was fascinated by the two insights about space and systemization being the catalysts for this achievement, especially after reading ‘The Timeless Way of Building‘. As Alexander writes: The artist, after observing hundreds of works / buildings / dishes has finally understood the ‘secret’, a rudimentary pattern which tells him under such and such circumstance, create the following field of relationships … for such and such reasons. The creative power is as a result of the system of patterns that we have – “a condensation of their own experience in the form of private rules of thumb”. The creative revolutions (the combination of patterns in unpredictable ways) are only possible after having a clear system of patterns – which Ferran seems to have created in his kitchen and with his chefs and which he did by defining and categorizing everything.
Of course, the space then needs to be alive enough to so that the artist can create these works (hence a dream come true). And incidentally, its this pattern language which will help to create the optimal space in the first place.