AROUND HOME : Notes on Cookie Cutters, and Garden and Animal Events : Cookie Cutters
KENNETH WALKER’S genuine Architectural Cookie Cutters bring closet architects into the kitchen. His Manhattan-based architectural firm, WalkerGroup/CNI, specializes in retail design projects such as Bloomingdale’s in Boca Raton, Fla., and prototypes for Lucky supermarkets in California. His L.A. office is currently working on the design for the retail and food facilities for Universal Studios Florida, Entertainment Attraction, in Orlando. Such a serious career needs occasional comic relief: The chance came last year when Walker attended a meeting at the Museum of Modern Art. He happened to bring along some mockups of famous-building-inspired cookie cutters he’d created in 1983. A product developer for MOMA’s sales department was delighted.
Each of the six cookie cutters in the MOMA-produced series is modeled after a landmark building: the Sydney Opera House; the chapel of Notre-Dame du Haute in Ronchamp, France; Chicago’s Sears Tower; and, in New York, the Chrysler Building, the TWA Terminal at Kennedy Airport and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. An Ohio craftsman makes the cookie cutters from tin.
Walker is now preparing sets of cookie cutters based on the states. For California, he’s chosen the gingerbread-Victorian Carson House in Eureka, the Transamerica Building in San Francisco and L.A.’s Tail ‘o the Pup hot dog stand. Clearly, Walker’s brainchild appeals to architecture’s friends and foes alike. As Walker puts it, “If you don’t like Frank Lloyd Wright, you can eat him.â€
Sells for $20 at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles; Montana Mercantile in Santa Monica, and Laguna Art Museum Store in Laguna Beach. Or mail order from (800) 447-6662.
