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Sandwiches & the Sectional Quality of Sacred Space

Sandwiches and architecture come (or perhaps go) together, as described in the Edible Geography blog:

I picked up my copy of Sandwich, a supplement to the Fall 2010 issue of Meatpaper.

Nestled between an interview with the 11th Earl of Sandwich (the 4th Earl is credited with popularising the consumption of meat between bread) and a meditation on why Thom Yorke would wait with a pack of sandwiches as well as a gun in the Radiohead song, “Talk Show Host,” is an essay by architect Nicholas de Monchaux… de Monchaux discusses art historian Rudolf Wittkower’s suggestion that the idealised proportions of Renaissance buildings such as Palladio’s Villa Rotonda can only be understood through the section — a vertical cut that “reveals a precisely perfected layering of space and substance that was contained by what might seem to have been an overwhelming or inscrutable façade.” Drawing on philosopher Mircea Eliade’s The Sacred and the Profane, de Monchaux then suggests that while plan view is inherently mundane and grounded (from planum, or the bottom of the foot), the section reveals the divine harmony of vertical space.

IMAGE: Egg salad and turkey avocado BLT sandwiches from Pret A Manger, photo by the celebrated chroniclers of lunch, Front Studio.

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