Weekly Drawing 2:

How to lay out a Croissant - Enric Miralles 2000

Here, Miralles lays out the correct method to formally analyze our favorite French pastry.

“A. DEFINITION

A surface wraps over itself and an inside appears, formed by superimposing itself over its outside...

Then the ends close over themselves, forming the wrapping over which the folds are arranged.

We recognize this form in the roof of the mouth... (a mystery comparable to that of the knife which breaks when introduced into a glass of water).

When measuring it, numbers return transparency to the form, with all its negative qualities:* the lack of color, smell and taste.

Because a croissant, or half moon in Argentina, is meant to be eaten.

B. EXERCISE TO LAY OUT A CROISSANT, STEP BY STEP:

1.1. Follow the outline of the croissant left on the photocopy.

1.2. Redo the plan emphasizing the tangents. Always give slightly more importance to straight segments than to curved... Let the constellations of center points appear without forming any relation between them, except the ordering of succeeding tangents at a common point.

We give the plan of its surface of support in the oven. And cross-sections located:

2.1. On both sides of the thickest part of the dough.

2.2. At the mid-point” (Miralles 2000).