Exploring the food futures through rituals, experiences, and materiality.
• Research
• Speculative Design
• Experience Design
On Food Futures
Food has been a carrier of culture throughout history. It is essential to our survival, yet at the same time, participation in eating activities have also played an important role in our emotional well-being. My design work and research in the world of food ranges from explorations into the cultural legacies of food to designing new ways of eating through ritual and the senses (in response to globalization and major shifts in our agricultural and food production practices).
Beyond Food: Exploring Future Food Scenarios, Domaine de Boisbuchet
This was an experiential installation that asked people to reconsider their relationship to water through the exploration of future scenarios around water harvesting and distribution systems. The performance culminated into a three-step ritual that explored multi-modal experiences around water harvesting and distribution.
More project info on Experiments page
The New Food Chain: Micro-plastics and Future Food Ecologies
Every year, 6.4 million tons of plastic gets thrown in the ocean and micro-plastics have been found in 114 aquatic species, causing brutal deaths and genetic mutations. The New Food Chain is an experiential design project that tries to evoke awareness in the participants about the urgency of the earth’s plastic crisis, humanity role in this ecological destruction, and the interspecies harm that ultimately impacts us, too. The pop-up experience uses immersive gaming, food, and cross-modal experience design as touch points for raising these questions.
More project info on Experiments page
Palette Palate: Experiencing Dining through Food Energies
Palette Palate is a product design project that explores the relationship between food and the human body through the concept of food energies in Chinese culture.
To showcase the concepts behind this product, we designed an interactive dining experience. Each table will share dishes with ingredients separated by energy type (indicated by color of the bowl). At the end of the meal, participants will regroup the bowls based on color to create an infographic through bowl configurations.
More project info on Experiments page
Favorite Projects & Case Studies
Image courtesy Framlab
Glasir: A Tree Assembles in Brooklyn
Bergen and New York-based studio, Framlab proposes Glasir, a modular aquaponic farm system that addresses the future of urban farming and the rising issue of food deserts in major U.S. cities. The technical vision behind this project beautifully highlights the possible partnerships between biology and AI—the studio uses an AI technology to generate modular assemblages based on tree branching systems to optimize the growth per square feet of the Glasir structures.
Here is a link to Framlab’s project page for more information.
Transformative Appetite: MIT Media Lab, Tangible Media Group
Transformative Appetite is a project by the Tangible Media Group at MIT Media Lab that explores futuristic dining experiences with food that shape shifts in response to environmental changes. Users can change the shape of their food based by manipulating the hydration and temperature changes, creating an ever evolving participatory eating experience.
Here is a link to the Transformative Appetite project page for more information.
Image courtesy Tangible Media Group, MIT Media Lab
Image courtesy Frame Magazine
Atoma, Alexandra Genis
Atoma is a speculative collection of spices that are artificially created at a molecular level, and act as foundational flavors that can be mixed and matched to create new palates. This project is very interesting in that the designer, Alexandra Genis, takes a deep dive into the science behind how human perceive and engage with taste and simultaneously provides the possibility for all-seasonal and all-local cuisine that disputes the dominant notion that the artificial is bad and unsustainable.
Here is a link to an article about Atoma for more information.
Nordic Food Lab
Throughout history, different civilizations and cultures have used fermentation as a means for both food and cultural preservation. The Copenhagen-based restaurant and food lab, Noma, has integrated the practice of fermentation into their culinary research, in an effort to uncover the breadth of historical practices in this space, as well as to create new methods for the future of food.
Here is a link to an article about Noma’s fermentation project for more information.
Image courtesy Nordic Food Lab