Opportunities in Adversity
In a feedback session with our own correspondents, The DIFD has been taking stock of opportunities and new pathways in food design that have opened up during the COVID-19 situation of 2020 and asked how designers have been refocusing their work and developing interesting new initiatives.
“Food is always Science Fiction for our bodies”
Alexandra Genis is a Berlin-based Critical Food Designer and the principal designer at TAS2R, a studio propagating gastro-intestinal science-fiction by bridging life sciences and gastronomy. Her work has been exhibited in international venues and she has spoken at conferences around Europe. Alexandra is a finalist of the BAD Award 2019 and Future Food Design Award 2018. In her kitchen-lab she is busy with project such as the translation of desire from fruit to fungi, plate biodiversity, and post-agricultural food production systems. She is also hosting events and workshops about the future of food.
“Food is used as a primary channel of experience and knowledge.”
Karen Lacroix is a Canadian illustrator, designer and publisher based in Porto, Portugal. She taught visual narratives at Richmond University (UK) and works for an eclectic range of clients such as Bright Ivy, English Touring Opera, Saffron Hall, Bishopsgate Institute, among others. After concluding an MA in Visual Communication at the Royal College of Art, she founded Uncanny Editions, an illustration publisher and studio exploring different modes of publication practice, collaborating with institutions such as the National Portrait Gallery, The Photographers’ Gallery and X Marks the Bökship. Her work is represented in collections such as MoMA (US), University College London, London College of Communication (UK), Serralves Foundation and Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (PT), among others. She is the founder of the Illustration School, a nomadic pedagogical platform that investigates the expanded field of illustration & food, and is co-director of the design research centre Shared Institute.
Tea Drop & Aquatecture
After receiving her Bachelors degree in Interior Architecture from the University of Pretoria in South Africa and thereafter working in that field for 7 years, Shaakira Jassat moved to the Netherlands to join a second bachelor program at the Design Academy Eindhoven, to open up her possibilities as a designer and work more hands on with materials and experimentation methods. She joined the pioneer group of the newly formed Food non Food department in 2014, and followed her fascination of water as a "material" in her design processes. Having South Africa still close to her heart, she was deeply touched by the severe drought that crippled the city of Cape Town recently and it inspired her graduation projects. She began these projects by harvesting her own water within her immediate home and city environment, trying to move away from the convenience of opening the tap.
Eat Ting
Our Food & Culture correspondent Hannerie Visser is based in Cape Town and works all over the African continent. She interviewed Mpho Tshukudu for us, a South African dietician and local food activist, who is also the co-author of 'Eat Ting', a book for South Africans on how to make healthy dishes with local ingredients.
Meet Sonia Verguet
Our Food & Experience correspondent Maud de Rohan Willner recently interviewed Sonia Verguet, a French designer based in Strasbourg. As stated on her website, “she cooks up many and various projects in the realms of food design, scenography and objects. She is continually searching for ways to light up everyday life with her eclectic, sometimes acidic, but always tasty ingredients.”
Biodesign & Tensegrity
Aurélie Fontan is a sustainable fashion designer focused on biodesign and ethical manufacturing processes. She has been working at the ASCUS Art & Science Lab for two years, researching and practicing biodesign with slime mould and kombucha, applied to fashion artefacts. Aurélie is the recipient of numerous awards: Dame Vivienne Westwood Sustainable and Ethical Award, Catwalk Textiles, M&S Womenswear Award at Graduate Fashion Week 2018 and an Honorary Mention for the kombucha dress at Reshape Competition in Barcelona. Our correspondent Steph Marsden discussed Aurélie’s inspiration and design process with her at her recent exhibition ‘Tensegrity’, which was part of this year's Edinburgh Science Festival.
“The emotional element”
Maud de Rohan Willner is a French/British creative food & experience designer based in London. Focusing on the senses, her aim is to tell stories and create interactive experiences for her guests to remember. Combining food and design she wants to explore innovative ways to convey messages and transmit emotions, through textures, colours, flavours, aromas and more. After finishing her BA in Sustainable Product Design at Falmouth University, UK, Maud proceeded to do an MA in Food Design and Innovation in Milan. "I’ve always somehow combined food & design and only realised this could become my work at the end of my studies! I started with supper clubs, a format that worked well in London, and now this is evolving to more varied events, for brands and companies as well as private events, workshops and many more exciting things," Maud says about her work.
“I am interested in those intuitive moments”
Lotte is a Dutch food designer based in Barcelona. She invents culinary interactions which focus on the social nature of food. She uses play as a tool to enable her audience to focus on means rather than ends; the act of play allows people to try out new things, to revise, modify and explore.
“The future of food and design is going to be planetary.”
Ishpreet Batra grew up in the city of 'Tehzeeb', Lucknow in India. She never took any formal education in food but the flavours of her culture attracted her to start experimenting with the complex flavours of 'Awadhi' cuisine at the age of 12. While the process of cooking gave her emotional balance, studying fine arts and design gave her the vision as well as the skill to understand her passion. Ishpreet has spent seven years working with various design startups, services and products as a User Experience Designer. Today Ishpreet lives close to the capital of India studying food culture, eating habits and creating unique multisensory experiences around little observations, and hopes to address some real world problems in future.
“It can be thought of as simply fuel or fetishised for pleasure.”
Steph Marsden enjoys thinking about, writing about and playing with her food. Not only a messy eater, she believes finding fun ways to play with our food (and our perceptions of food) is a great way to learn more about the complex nuances of what we eat, and its relation to culture, the environment and our global food system. Steph studied furniture design and cabinet making and has recently completed an MSc in Gastronomy at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh. She aims to further examine the connections between gastronomy, art and design through research and creative practice.
Efficiency, a Social Perspective and Food Dreams
Lotte Meeuwissen is a Dutch Food Designer based in Barcelona. She invents culinary interactions with a focus on the social nature of food. Lotte uses "play" as a tool to enable her audience to focus on means rather than ends, allowing people to try out new things, to revise, modify and explore. With her work she creates new social bonds, both with food as well as amongst people. We talked with Lotte about efficiency, a social perspective and food dreams.
“The outcome is often quite sensitive, raw and emotional.”
Hannerie Visser grew up on a table grape farm in South Africa. Her mother and grandmother were both domestic science teachers. Today she designs and produces culinary experiences through her Cape Town-based company "Studio H". Hannerie’s driving force is to find solutions to challenges in the food system to ultimately contribute to a better and more sustainable world through food and design. Hannerie's "Studio H" is a culinary-minded design studio that creates experiences through the lens of food. In 2017 Hannerie founded her own food and culture magazine, "Chips!", which launched at the New York Food Book Fair. 2018 saw the launch of Studio H’s Future Food Report, published with samples in book format and accompanied by trend workshops. In the same year Hannerie founded "FOOD XX", a conference, awards and network dedicated to women in the food industry.
“It was design that brought me to food.”
Xijing Xu is a Berlin-based designer from China. She helped develop “ChiTofu”, an Interdisciplinary Experimental Food Design Program in Hangzhou, China before starting her Masters at the Universität der Künste in Berlin. She graduated with a poetic and visionary project called "Wanderer" which combines textiles and milk fermentation. We talked to her about all things food, design and education.
“The field of food and design is where opportunity and challenge meet.”
Sophie Yotova is a certified Eating Psychology Coach and that has dedicated her life to devising a sustainable and flexible strategy for people to cultivate long-lasting and adaptable healthy eating habits. She does this partly through her platform Foodie Boulevard – a disruptive organization that explores food as an interactive and customizable long-term strategy for individual health promotion. Her main focus as a correspondent for the DIFD will be to explore what shapes the role of food in our society and what does or doesn’t impact our habits, beliefs, choices, and perceptions when it comes to the role of food in our lives. And what we can do to move forward, make better choices, and live a more harmonious, balanced, and sustainable lifestyle both when it comes to food and beyond.
“Considering not only the food but also the space in which it is consumed.”
Jashan Sippy is an architect and food-lover from Mumbai, India. He spent his early life travelling around the globe licking buildings to experience them holistically. His thesis “Gastronomy & Architecture: Multisensory Experiences” explored the cross between the two artistic disciplines. Jashan moved to San Francisco, CA to pursue an M.Sc. in International Business and has designed various spaces for food – from production, to consumption and waste, including grocery stores, restaurants and hotels. He has conducted innovation workshops in design and hospitality institutes and has curated multiple eating experiences with his multidisciplinary design studio Sugar & SPACE.
Inviting People to the Dinner Table Again
Louise Knoppert is a designer who aims to stimulate people's senses and create new experiences, improving people's lives through her design. Her designs are presented as smart and simple solutions through functional and ergonomic products. From "Animal Coffin," a biodegradable animal coffin, to "Opscheppen" a series of bowls that help children learn about food quantities, Louise has designed sensitive products for various target groups. She talked to us about her project "Proef," a series of tools for people who are medically prevented from enjoying meals in a social context, due to being fed through a feeding tube.
Food, Fermentation and Design
Olivia Ioannou was born and raised in Cyprus. She studied design at Goldsmiths University in London (2014-17). After her studies, her interest for food lead her to volunteer on agroecological and organic farms in Spain in an effort to understand a bit more about the food chain through personal experience and practical learning. The methodologies developed through her projects have influenced her daily life, especially fermented foods and the processes used to create them. Returning to Cyprus has allowed her to seek out people in her home country who are looking to disrupt or simply question the conventional food supply chain, whether it is by living a lifestyle guided by permaculture principles or simply making as much as possible from scratch.
“Effective food and eating design has the potential to make us more human again.”
Dr Richard Mitchell is a Professor in Food Design at Otago Polytechnic in New Zealand. Richard has been researching and publishing on tourism and hospitality consumer behaviour, business collaboration and design thinking for food and culinary arts education for more than two decades. He has also presented at academic and industry conferences in more than a dozen countries and is active in working with a wide range of industry partners on wine, food and hospitality projects, including being a current management committee member for Eat New Zealand and a former chairperson of the New Zealand Food and Wine Tourism Network. His food design practice is in two main fields. Firstly food experience design and performance, and secondly using experience design to reshape classroom experiences in the culinary arts. In 2014 and 2016 he was convenor and creative director or the International Food Design Conference and Studio held at Otago Polytechnic.
“The political aspects of food are often underexposed.”
Anastasia Eggers works in the field of speculative and critical design and design research. In her practice, she explores social, cultural, political and environmental issues, frequently choosing food and food production as a medium to create narratives around those topics. Her work often results in future scenarios that comment on recent societal tendencies and show complex relations between design fiction and reality. For us she will be corresponding about food and design in Russia.
“We can always do something positive for our world and society”
Tainá Guedes, founder of Entretempo Kitchen Gallery and Food Art Week, is a food activist and book author who was born in Brazil and is now based in Berlin. She works on different projects on how we conceive food in a cultural and social context. For Tainá, art becomes an extension of the kitchen, and food a common base for expressing and sharing thoughts and ideas. With her work, she explores the political and social impact of food as a manifestation of history, sociology, geography, science, philosophy and communication.
“There is a lack of connection from the food design field to the gastronomic world.”
Katinka Versendaal is an experimental food designer. She is deeply interested in what is happening in the world of food as well as in socio-cultural trends, scientific advancements, and their potential impact on the way we eat today and in the future. Katinka founded her own food design studio, The Eatelier, with the purpose of translating scientific research and technological innovation into the world of food. The Eatelier develops research through an interdisciplinary lens, which then is translated into food and hospitality concepts. The aim is to initiate product innovation and to create compelling culinary experiences for a wide variety of audiences in order to promote the creation of a more delicious, healthy and sustainable future.
‘Cowgirl’ wins Future Food Design Awards
One month ago Adelaide Lala Tam won both the jury and the public prize at the Future Food Design Awards with her 0.9 Grams of Brass project. We spoke to her about her work and her success.
“Food and design is often confused with ‘food design’.”
Chieri Higa was born and raised in the US and Austria. She is a graduate of Design Academy Eindhoven’s Food Non Food department and is currently working on a cookbook with her grandmother about the evolution of Okinawan food. We are happy to have her be our correspondent for all things food and design in Japan.
“We produced stills in the style of the old Dutch Masters’ oil paintings.”
Reinhard Hunger is one of the most influential German food photographers. Modern food photography is today's witness of food culture and trends, just like painting used to be. With his images, Hunger aims to tell a story, often with a humorous twist. He prefers to show the natural beauty of food, but still, his images are the result of highly conceptual thinking and detailed design work. As we all eat with our eyes and images play such an important role in our perception, I was tempted to ask Reinhard a couple of questions about his professional work.
“I suddenly could combine my passion for food and interest in nature and science with technology and design.”
Chloé Rutzerveld is a Dutch designer that critically explores food production and consumption. After graduating from the Eindhoven University of Technology in 2014 with the project Edible Growth, she started her own studio Food & Concept Design. Chloé successfully combines design, science and technology in order to find new ways of making food more efficient, healthy and sustainable. By using food as medium, she makes new technologies and food issues tangible for a wide variety of people, facilitating better understanding and in-depth discussions of related themes.
“Food as culture would help us better understand ourselves.”
Albert Fuster i Martí is an Architect who is doing his PhD in History of Art and Architecture at ETSAB-UPC, Barcelona. He is the Academic Director of ELISAVA, Barcelona School of Design and Engineering since 2014, and he has lectured in history of art, design and architecture and project methodology at various schools. He has collaborated with Ferran Adrià and the elBulli team since 2013 for the project of the new creative lab in elBulli restaurant in Cala Montjoi (Catalunya). He is also the Director of the Master in Creative Process, by Elisava and elBullifoundation. And for us he will be writing about the food & design developments in Barcelona!
“The only way the food system can be influenced is through the people.”
Katharina Unger is probably best known for her project "Farm432", an insect incubator for people to grow their own proteins and nutrients in the form of insects in their home. Having started in 2013, Unger has since commercialised the project, now known as “Hive”. Additionally, she has worked with a Maasai tribe in Tanzania who are affected by climate change and a completely new lifestyle of settled agriculture, bringing about many cultural changes affecting the food they eat. As our correspondent she will be reporting on recent developments in food and design in Hong Kong.
“I like to imagine food design as a possible form of activism.”
Francesca Sarti is perhaps best known for being the founding member of Arabeschi di Latte, a design studio that aims to experiment with new design concepts relating to food and beyond. Combining her fields of interest, with experiences and research, she is able to focus on the world around us through a critical and creative filter. As the UK correspondent for The DIFD she will be reporting on the food & design world as it is evolving in the UK.
“I’m fascinated by how creatives reimagine materials and immerse people into new rituals of eating.”
Raquel Kalil is a San Francisco based UX Researcher and Service Designer with a foundation in Architecture and Interaction Design. Besides UX design and research, Raquel's creative practice explores gestures and rituals around eating which culminate in a body of work regarding the future of eating. She collaborates with artists and designers to communicate sustainable possibilities through gastronomic experiences.
“We will need to design the food habits of the present to be adaptable and suitable for the future.”
Nataly is a Colombian Industrial Designer with a master's degree in New Eating Habits at L'École de Design Nantes Atlantique. She is passionate about the relationship between humans and food and how the geopolitical and environmental stakes are evolving the way we eat. With experience in the food field, she has worked as food designer for restaurant chains, food & beverage industry, wine producers, and currently, as the creative director of Foodlosofia, a Mexican food design consulting agency. With an international scope including Colombia, Mexico, France and Australia, her work has a strong focus on human-centered design, applying new research methodologies with the objective of designing meaningful, sustainable and profitable food models.
“When it comes to food design, everyone has different definitions and perceptions.”
Su Park is a former ceramic artist from Seoul, Korea, and recent graduate of the MA course Product and Spatial Design at Aalto University in Helsinki, Finland. She is currently working as a food designer at AÄÅ, a design studio which Su Park co-founded in 2014. Her focus in food design lies in looking at the bigger picture of food production and consumption and using design principles to help solve the issues in these fields. As our correspondent she will be reporting on recent developments in food and design in both Finland and Korea.
“How will future technology and food culture change the way we eat?”
Yunwen “Tutu” Tu is a food designer and curator, who seeks ways to push boundaries through her work. Such as envisioning how the food of the global diaspora will be impacted by environmental, socioeconomic, political, and technological trends. Tutu's work has been featured in food design exhibitions at the ACM Future of Computing Academy, Asian Art Museum, Foodinno Symposium, California Academy of Sciences and Chinese Culture Center. As our correspondent she will be reporting on recent developments in food and design along the US West Coast.
“Design has always shaped society and it can definitely cause social impact.”
Josephine Abou Abdo is a Lebanese native living between Beirut and Rome. After studying interior architecture in Lebanon and product design in Rome, Josephine is now best described as a multidisciplinary designer and problem solver who uses product, service, and food design for innovation. As our Lebanese correspondent she will focus on writing about design thinking and food design in the Middle East.
Tina Breidi by Retha Ferguson
“Food is a global language to connect and act upon.”
Tina Breidi is a Lebanese born designer, based in Cape Town, driven by exploring traditional cultures and tackling social and environmental challenges. Since completing her Masters in Food Design at the Scuola Politecnica di Design last year, she joined Design Indaba and helped launch Antenna 2017, a new initiative between Design Indaba and Dutch Design Week. As our correspondent for South-Africa & Lebanon she will focus on writing about real human values. By presenting provocative concepts and projects she aims to show alternative ways of living, and changing people towards a more sustainable mindset.
Emilie Baltz by Tim Wilson
“Food and design both have as a goal to better the human experience – functionally & fantastically”
Emilie Baltz is an American award-winning food designer, technologist and experiential artist. As a correspondent for the DIFD she will give a regular update on the technological and sensorial side of Food & Design.
Inés Lauber by Satellite Berlin
“Food is a mirror of society and a statement of the zeitgeist”
Meet our German correspondent: Inés Lauber. Inés is a food and experience designer based in Berlin. On a regular base she will be writing for The DIFD about the German scene of Food & Design.
Subscribe here
Sign up for the Dutch Institute of Food & Design newsletter and stay up to date!