The Mount Dennis Mobile Community Kitchen was a collaboration between Master of Architecture students at University of Toronto’s Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design and the Mount Dennis Community Kitchen. The project started from three simple objectives which challenged the structure of most architectural design studios: to build something full scale; to collaborate with a community group in a mature suburb where fractured urban form exacerbates social and economic isolation; and to focus on an essential and urgent program: the production, distribution and consumption of food.

The students met with the community every Friday evening, cooking and eating meals while presenting an evolving set of architectural ideas. The final design consisted of three bike trailers, each with a complementary function: a cart for distributing and collecting, which accommodates three large garbage cans, a cart for preparing and cooking, with a large barbeque and a sink that unpacks to double its area, and an eating and distributing cart that can function as a very large table or market surface. The three carts assemble differently at each site and event beneath a colourful tarpaulin that covers them from sun or rain. So that resident users can create different urban and architectural compositions in relation to Mount Dennis’ diverse spaces: urban areas, train tracks, Black Creek and Eglinton Flats.

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