Next Friday the annual Dutch Design Week festivities kick off in Eindhoven, home of the Design Academy and Piet Hein Eek’s Factory/Workshop. Including some projects, lectures and presentations at the Embassy of Food, we’ve rounded up six food design happenings that should be on anyone’s radar during Northern Europe’s largest design event.
Dutch design platform ‘Agri Meets Design’ encourages farmers and designers to collaborate on social issues. Check out their greenhouse to listen to audio stories made by farmers and designers; in these short stories they address the challenges facing agriculture today, and how design can help solve them.
Embassy of Food: Edible Invisible
The Edible Invisible exhibition at the Embassy of Food is all about microbes, the tiny flora in our digestive system that can affect our emotions, physical health, and behavior. Edible Invisible aims to change how we think about microbes through design; included in the exhibition is a sensory experience designed by students at the Food Non Food department of the Design Academy Eindhoven that conveys to participants how microbes affect us.
The finalists of the Future Food Awards will also be on display at the Embassy of Food. As media partners and jurists (our founder and editor LinYee Yuan served on this year’s jury), we’re excited to celebrate this year’s winner. This year’s finalists are changing the world of food through critiquing the meat industry, revolutionizing the way we use spices, and synthesizing traditional Chinese medicine. Vote for your favorite project after taking a look at MOLD’s review of the three finalists to help determine the audience award!
This inclusive design project by Aurore Brard makes it easier for the visually impaired to perceive objects on the dinner table. Brard’s specially designed utensils and other tableware are intended to be easier to recognize by their shape, allowing users to avoid picking up forks by the wrong end.
Need a coffee? Of course you do. The Zuiderzee Museum is popping up during DDW as a cafe serving “slow coffee” and waffles. As part of the ZuiderzeeFood project, Middelburg-based food designers the Foodcurators unpacks the historical food culture of the Zuiderzee region by presenting old coffee brewing customs through modern techniques. Additionally, flipping expectations of the Dutch stroopwafel treat, the Polder Waffle takes the cornerstonre of Dutch cuisine, the Frieslander potato, and transforms it into a sweet treat.
This food-meets-art project plays with the emotions surrounding the act of eating, using a sensorial food experience to interpret and test scientific data on how food makes us feel. The exhibit combines meals with a design space curated by Justine Kontou, whose sensorial exhibit employs a holistic approach to design, developing an environment that produces positive emotions.
