Sensory Architecture Series: Taste
Taste in Architecture: Designing for the Mouth, Not Just the Mind
When we speak of taste in design, we usually mean aesthetics, a question of style or visual appeal. But what if we take the idea of “taste” more literally? What if we asked: how does architecture connect to the mouth?
Taste is the most intimate of the senses. It involves ingestion, taking the outside world into our bodies. Because of that, it is often considered outside the realm of architecture. And yet, if architecture is to be truly sensory, truly human, taste must not be ignored.
This blog explores how taste can play a role in our built environment, not only through food but through materiality, memory, culture, and ritual. Taste, after all, is never just about the tongue. It is an experience shaped by place, atmosphere, and emotion.
Architecture as a Backdrop for Taste
The most obvious way architecture connects to taste is through its role as the setting for food. Kitchens, dining rooms, cafés, school canteens, food halls, and urban markets all shape our eating experiences.
But more than that, architecture contributes to how food tastes. A perfectly brewed coffee enjoyed in a sunlit corner with natural timber surfaces and garden views tastes better than the same cup on a plastic chair under harsh fluorescent light.
Research supports this: our perception of flavour is deeply influenced by context. Colour, lighting, acoustics, even texture under the fingertips, all alter how we perceive taste. In this sense, architecture becomes an ingredient in the recipe. A subtle one, but powerful nonetheless.
At Daedal, we believe architecture should never be neutral in such settings. It should enhance the sensory richness of food through warm materials, filtered daylight, shelter from wind, and just the right amount of visual intimacy or openness.
The Flavour of Materials
Beyond food, we might ask: do materials have a taste?
Stone, clay, timber, and even certain metals evoke a kind of flavour memory, a bodily recognition that bypasses language. Think of the taste of salt in the air next to a coastal concrete wall. The tang of rust on the tongue after touching corten steel. The earthy mineral smell of terracotta, which seems almost edible in the heat.
While we do not physically lick these surfaces (usually), we intuitively know their taste. This synaesthetic crossover, where the sight or smell of a material suggests flavour, is part of the richness of sensory design.
Plastic has no taste. It offers no ancestral memory, no sensual resonance. Natural materials, in contrast, feel digestible to the senses. They belong in the same world as our food. We understand them intuitively because they come from the earth, just as our food does.
This is one reason we favour biobased materials in our designs—not only for sustainability, but because they feel right. They align with what the body knows.
Cultural Taste and Architectural Identity
Taste is not only biological. It is deeply cultural.
The architecture of a place, especially its public spaces, often reflects its culinary identity. Think of the difference between a Mediterranean piazza filled with café tables and fresh produce stalls, versus a North American food court under artificial lighting and piped-in music.
In one, taste is ritual, social, integrated into public life. In the other, it is consumption: a quick refuelling between errands.
Architecture has a role to play in shifting these dynamics. We can design for lingering, for conversation, for slowness. We can create edible landscapes, community kitchens, and urban farms. We can blur the lines between food and place so that taste becomes part of the city’s identity, not just a private act behind closed doors.
We can also design for cooking, not just eating. A family kitchen that opens to a garden and catches the morning light is not simply functional; it is an invitation to nourishment, both physical and emotional.
Memory, Ritual, and the Mouth
Taste has a direct line to memory. One mouthful can transport us years back, to a grandparent’s house, a festival, a childhood lunchbox.
Good architecture does the same. It anchors us in time. It creates rituals that stay with us.
Imagine a school where the smell and taste of fresh herbs growing along a walkway is part of the daily rhythm. Or a workplace with a tea-making station in a sunny nook, inviting pause and conversation. These are small design gestures that honour the mouth as part of the body’s intelligence.
And while architects may not control what food is served, we do shape the stage. By designing with intention and sensory awareness, we can support rituals of taste that deepen people’s connection to place—and to each other.
A City Designed to Be Eaten
Some cities taste better than others.
Not just in terms of their cuisine, but in how they integrate taste into the flow of life. Farmers markets, foraging trails, fruit trees in parks, water fountains with filtered drinking water, these all express a generosity of spirit. They signal that the city is not only built for movement or shelter, but also for enjoyment and nourishment.
Could we design buildings that feed their users, metaphorically and literally?
Could apartment balconies be places not just to sit, but to grow herbs? Could rooftops double as bee sanctuaries or edible gardens? Could buildings collect rainwater not only for plumbing, but for drinking?
Taste, in this expanded view, is not just flavour. It is aliveness. It is a design tool that connects body and building, ecology and culture.
Conclusion: Designing for All the Senses
Taste may seem like the most elusive of the architectural senses—hard to design for, difficult to pin down. But that is what makes it so potent. It reminds us that architecture is not just what we see or touch, but what we live through with our whole selves.
When we design for taste, we design for nourishment. Not just of the body, but of memory, community, and connection.
And in doing so, we move one step closer to the kind of architecture we believe in at Daedal: soulful, human-centred, alive.