2022 AA Prize for Unbuilt Work – Special Mention

Jury citation

Crying Room is a machine with a social conscience. Seated at the centre of the space, an occupant slices onions using a series of guillotines suspended from the roof. The onions are used to make a soup that provides sustenance to, and acts as a restorative for, the local community. Satisfaction for the occupant comes through the cathartic act of crying, achieved with the help of not only the onions, but also the proffered bottle of whiskey and packet of cigarettes. The jury was impressed by the surreal and humorous nature of the proposal, as well as the beautifully executed, finely detailed drawings. The proposal’s social agenda makes it a successful antidote for our troubling times.

Architect’s description

“Those who do not weep, do not see.” —Victor Hugo, Les Mis é rables

The word “restaurant” emerged in Paris in the sixteenth century in reference to street vendors who offered highly concentrated and nutritious soup as a remedy for physical exhaustion among the destitute. The word “soup” is also French in origin and describes the ancient stockpots used to simmer soup continuously for generations. Many soups, including the provincial standard French onion soup, were distilled from these gently simmering layers of history.

Crying Room draws from this etymology to propose a modern form of the restaurant as a crying room. The project explores the need for not only communal physical restoration but emotional restoration as well.

Onions are fed into the guillotine from a ladder above. By pulling on the handles from the crying room, the inhabitant initiates the guillotine action of the blades to slice the onions. Outside, a counterweighting stone rises and falls, mirroring the motion of the blades and reflecting the action to the city as the onion vapour starts to emanate from between the battens. Inside the crying room is a comfortable chair and a table. On the table is a bottle of Scotch, a packet of cigarettes and a wi-fi access code.

Below the crying room is the stockpot, where soup is served. Here, the community gathers for warmth and sustenance. The chopped onions are fed by gravity to the stockpot, to create a communal ocean of soup and warmth, around which a temporary restaurant is formed. The crying room is designed to operate within public spaces, where crowds tend to gather. However, the machine is on wheels, so it can be moved around the city to wherever the need for weeping is greatest.