Culinary Topology: Rethinking the Parking Lot Threshold at the Montreal Hospital

The parking lot is the arrival area for many people entering the hospital. This space has an opportunity to become something more than a featureless utilitarian space for cars, it could offer an integrated experience of 'threshold'. This thesis uses culinary theory as an architectural tool to redefine the parking lot as 'threshold'. Cuisine will offer a metaphorical design language that will act as interlocutor in the design process of rethinking the arrival space between car and hospital.Cooking is an appropriate guide for this process - it is an act which transforms raw materials through acts of combinations, manipulations and deformations toward a delightful end. Three cooking elements: blanching, sauce and soufflé are used to transform the physical elements of the underground entry threshold at the hospital with an aim to make the experience more appropriate as a gateway between sickness and health.