Design Brunch conversation, Food Mood network, design research, mixed media projects !

See you during Design September.
Spread the word. Share the world.

Design is not decoration. Though decoration needs to be part of the picture. But of what picture are we talking ? of what system(s) in fact ?

The concept: cuisine and food design to investigate complex wicked problems.
Conversation. Emergence. Food for thought.


Cuisine, is French for 'kitchen' and first meant that or 'a culinary establishment'; Cuisine, culinary art or the practice or manner of preparing food or the food so prepared; Cuisine, kitchen available with varying levels of equipment Food, material that contains or consists of essential body nutrients, and is ingested and assimilated by an organism to produce energy. Design, let us have a conversation at Design Brunch or on Food Mood. Hundreds of years ago, the Hindu scriptures Upanishads were already mentioning ‘You are what you eat’, and more closely in Europe, in 1826, Anthelme Brillat-Savarin wrote, in Physiologie du Goût, ou Méditations de Gastronomie Transcendante: ‘Dis-moi ce que tu manges, je te dirai ce que tu es.’ Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are. Isn’t this user-centered design in order to design product-service systems? If design allows ‘transformation of existing conditions into preferred ones’ (Herbert Simon), ‘cuisine’ is interesting to put next to it, close to it, into it, or vice-versa. Especially as a process but also as a space (and a non-space), it might ensure that thinking and talking about ‘design as cuisine’ or vice-versa results into reframing making and consuming. Why would Cuisine allow to enhance the design envelope, the design thinking, the design attitude? Design Brunch is part of {creativity * conversation}, a series of events and gatherings where design related topics are talked about. Different formats allow to explore and exchange ideas and thoughts about design as process, about creativity and innovation, about everyday life practices, about food design and table rituals. Design Brunch is also part of the "Design as Cuisine as ..." set of activities conceived by Alok Nandi. It is about design research, exploring conceptual frameworks to articulate design in relation to Cuisine as a vital transversal place for understanding creation and consumption. Recently in Torino took place "Changing the Change", a design research conference, organised under the direction of Ezio Manzini. His main argument is very simple: we must urgently change the rapid changes currently occurring in our world into a direction of sustainability. And design can help us do that: "Something that we know very well about the present is that the world is changing, rapidly and profoundly. The only certain thing that we know about the future is that the current change must change direction. It must find the way to sustainability." "Design as Cuisine as ..." is also developed through Food Mood, a social networking space where conversation continues in virtual realms, complementary to Design Brunch gatherings. How to focus on potentialities in the transition towards a "sustainable knowledge society" ? by looking at stories on making and consuming. Design is not decoration ! Though some place is needed for decoration.