Temporary Kitchen 2026
Urban Tea Making with Gardy Wu
A collective experiment between urban foraging and tea culture
23 August 2026, 10 am–5 pm – Gathering & Processing
Excursion to the Wildkräuterei and into Cologne’s urban landscape
Meeting point: Wildkräuterei, Dürener Str. 420, 50858 Cologne-Lindenthal
Followed by processing in the Temporary Kitchen
Registration required! A small salad-and-bread lunch is included.
29 November 2026 – Save the Date!
Tasting of the teas developed together
No registration required!
All events are free of charge!
For the first event of Temporary Kitchen 2026, culinary artist and designer Gardy Wu will realise the format Urban Tea Making. It consists of two events: an excursion to the Wildkräuterei Köln and public green spaces on 23 August, followed by a tea tasting in the Mauritiusviertel on 29 November.
Urban Tea Making explores tea as a collective process. The project brings together urban foraging, hands-on processing and shared tea drinking in a collective experiment. Nature and the current season provide the framework: which plants will be found and which teas will emerge remains open.
During a guided herb walk on 23 August, participants will explore the Wildkräuterei and its surroundings – a wild-growing garden in the middle of Cologne as well as the surrounding urban nature. Participants will gather suitable wild plants and learn about other plants from the area that can be used for infusions. Afterwards, the collected plants will be processed together in the mobile Temporary Kitchen in the Mauritiusviertel.
The workshop focuses on discovering traditional methods of tea production. Depending on the plants and the desired result, different techniques such as withering, rolling, oxidation, drying, roasting and fermentation can be tested and compared. Some processes, particularly fermentation, can also be continued at home. At the end of the workshop, participants will receive a small amount of the tea produced together to take home.
A small salad-and-bread lunch will be provided free of charge.
At a second event on 29 November, the teas developed together will be served and tasted. The tea tasting is open to everyone, regardless of whether they participated in the first event. Further details will follow soon!
About the Temporary Kitchen
The Temporary Kitchen is a mobile kitchen that originated as part of the exhibition Cooking as Performance and has been activated through a variety of formats since summer 2023 as part of the event series Temporary Kitchen im Mauritiusviertel.
Artist Paula Erstmann and curator Lisa Klosterkötter explored the neighbourhood surrounding the Temporary Gallery, its local businesses and restaurants, people working in gastronomy, and residents. In cooperation with local initiatives, communities and associations, they invited people to cook and eat together as a way of getting to know one another, building connections and exchanging ideas within the neighbourhood.
The Temporary Gallery’s mobile kitchen is an open, modular, wall-less space on wheels that can be used in public space as a meeting point, summer kitchen, laboratory or stage.
The Temporary Kitchen emerged from a desire to create opportunities for conversation within the Temporary Gallery’s neighbourhood. Whether through an evening meal on a strip of grass, a lunchtime snack at the weekly market or a shared shopping trip through neighbourhood stores, it aims to encourage everyday encounters, mutual support and exchange about everything that concerns us – including, not least, art.
With this in mind, Temporary Kitchen 2026 opened its existing structures through an open call, inviting initiatives, artists and neighbours to propose ideas and giving them the opportunity to realise their own event in the Mauritiusviertel.
About the Artist
Gardy Wu works as a culinary artist and designer at the intersection of food, design and cultural practices. In her practice, she develops culinary concepts, communal dining formats and experimental dishes that engage with questions of identity, cultural exchange, materiality and social rituals.
She understands food as a medium for encounters, knowledge exchange and shared experiences. Her engagement with tea is shaped by her family’s tea shop in Cologne, where she has worked with tea in practice for more than ten years. During stays in Taiwan and Japan, she deepened her knowledge of traditional production methods and of the relationships between tea, craft, landscape and community.
With Urban Tea Making, she brings these experiences into a local context and explores new forms of tea culture together with participants, drawing on the plant life of Cologne.
Image: Gardy Wu, Anna Sarvira (illustration)
