We are in the Paopao’s valley surrounded by beautiful mountains.
In the bay of Paopao in front of supermarket SUPER U ARE, take the road to the valley . We are 1,5 km from main road on the left handside.
A green building in the heart of the valley
Fa’atura Metua Vahine – respect for Mother Earth !
The relation to nature is deeply embedded in the Polynesian lifestyle, it is lost in urban sprawl but lives in rural areas.
We took inspiration from polynesian best practices, we found local materials, made adapted changes, learned from practices … these are the keys to Food & CookLab !
We seek to demonstrate that it is possible to produce work tools that respect the environment as much as possible.
A pilot project!
At Food & CookLab, we seek to
- find the best possible equation for activities very intense in energy (non industrial process)
- design a duplicable and modular place so that anyone could reuse our own experiment
Drop cost, recycle and duplicate !
The construction method was almost naturally focused on the container. Part of the island life, links with the outside, the container holds several advantages : re-use, availability, simple implementation, duplication and price. The narration of the first contacts of Polynesians and settlers reminds us of the importance of iron : nails were a bargaining chip. Today, the transport of goods has become massive, container carriers deposit small and large containers that sometimes sit unnecessarily in our beautiful landscape. Let’s use them ! Surround them with beautiful local woods ! And let’s show that we can relocate our consumption by transforming our local production ! Less dependance from outside !
The Food & CookLab is located in the little village of PAOPAO, « route des ananas », Pineapples road, in a very agricultural district on the island of Moorea.
One of the first features of the building is to offer two distinct yet complementary spaces, the FoodLab, a processing laboratory, and the CookLab, a culinary space, to learn how to simply cook local products and then enjoy them on site.
Thanks to the nature of the container components, we designed a U-shaped space largely opened to the outside for the CookLab part, culinary space, and closed for the FoodLab part, laboratory.
The containers will be fully covered with wood slats from Tubuai (austral island) and protected with a green wall to match the beautiful green landscape of the valley.