It is an ongoing partnership between hosts, designers and educators Carlotta Novella & Gaia Crocella.
As spatial practitioners they design convivial settings and moments of togetherness through food, producing live and experimental meals, culinary instal
Translated from the Italian “fried mix”, Fritto Misto explores multidimensional and multi-sensorial ways of practising. It embraces the need to design for complexity (and with complexity). We look at the power of food as the ultimate equaliser and connector, able to cut across cultures, political views, class systems and geographical boundaries. Food, in all its forms and rituals, is adopted as a design tool to create spaces where to host and facilitate conversations, decision making, participatory situated practice and co-design. Crossing the fields of art, architecture and ecology through what we eat, why we eat it and how, this creative and collaborative partnership finds joy in designing immersive performative acts, edible spaces and sculptures, site-specific interventions, hands-on thinking environments, reserach projects and new tools for sharing (and caring).FRITTO MISTO’s events, workshops, productions and performances take the shape of what is understood to be local, borrowing the language and the tools of the commons, the wisdom of our world’s kitchens, and celebrating the unique pool of resources and lore already present within each project’s context. “Critical conviviality”, “collective digestion”, “spatial fermentation” and “discursive dinners”, are some of the design methods used, while the food offer acts as a vehicle to develop new processes and recipes for the future. We see hospitality as a spatial practice, a form of care, and a call to action, generating new rituals, visions and possibilities. Afterall, sharing food together, in purpose, can drive revolutions.
FRITTO MISTO is Carlotta Novella & Gaia Crocella, with many collaborators and friends.
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Carlotta Novella is anartist, architect, teacher and host, part of London based practice public works.
Having graduated from IUAV Venice, and after that from the MA
Arch programme at Central Saint Martins, she has since developed a multidisciplinary practice which explores the idea of gathering and the new tools created by architects to foster participatory city making.
Her work looks at how spaces, structures and rituals of food production and sharing can develop civic practices, promoting direct involvement and collective action, to transform and reclaim contemporary public life through conviviality.
She has been involved in multiple public works projects.
These included, amongst others, WetLab with Assembly, We Are Cally for Islington Council, R-Urban Poplar, Desiccate with Care for the Istanbul Design Biennial, High Tea Roots for Lore of Blackfriars, the Rotherhithe Public Living Room, the drawing of The Ministry for Common Land for the British Pavilion at the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale and the Jersey Potato Connosseur with Fairland Collective.
Carlotta has taught at UAL, UCA Canterbury, UMA Sweden and is currently full-time acting leader for the first year of BA Architecture at Central Saint Martins, as part of the Spatial Practice programme. Alongside her work with public works and teaching, Carlotta is currently developing two research projects connected to her Italian roots: The Scrematura Atlas and the Contrade Archive.
Gaia Crocella is an architect, holistic life coach, teacher and host, part of London based architcture practice Publica. She studied Architecture in Sweden and India and holds qualifications in Architecture and Human Centred Design. She has considerable experience in using design and education to empower communities, foster a sense of belonging and integration. This has been of particular relevance in her work with non-EU displaced communities. She initiated a live research project (Interdine, 2019) investigating the moral role of architecture in a world characterised by mass displacement, using discursive meals as a platform for integration through food. Through the act of hosting, Interdine subverted the relationship between the guest and the host. Interdine has been nominated for the RIBA Silver Medal 2018 and shortlisted in the YTAA 2020.
Gaia collaborated in the development of the Global Free Unit classrooms in Lesvos and Izmir in 2019 and 2020. She led workshops that enabled students of architecture to work together with volunteers and local residents to explore, analyse and map the refugee camps and provide a holistic understanding of the social and built context in a sensitive and critical way. The students later worked on design proposals that responded to key themes identified through their research. She has recently co-founded an international collaborative that connects spatial practitioners from Europe, Africa, India and the UK (Colact ,2021).
In London she works as an urban designer at Publica , where she contributes to the development of major public realm visions, strategies and policy guidance, working closely with the city’s communities and stakeholders. Gaia is also an Associate Lecturer leading a studio in Stage 1, BA Architecture at UAL Central Saint Martins while frequenting as a guest Lecturer at Umeå School of Architecture in Sweden.