Food

The concept: cuisine and food design as terrain 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 a Design Brunch or on Food Mood or at Design Open Table.

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?

Mar. 2007 – Doors of Perception 9 on JUICE: Food, Energy, Design – New Delhi

Sept. 2008 – Design Brunch #01 at Brussels Fine Arts Museum

Nov. 2008 – Exhibition “Sandesh” at St-Etienne Intl. Design Biennale, France

May 2009 – Sustainable Food Systems – Crosstalks VUB, Navigating the complex nature of energy efficiency at Atomium Brussels

Sept. 2009 – Design Brunch #02 at Recyclart, Brussels

Sept. 2010 – Intervention at TEDx Flanders @ The Zoo, Antwerp – Foodmood

Oct. 2010 – Intervention at Reims Art & Design School, France

Feb. 2011 – Intervention at Le lieu du design, Paris

Sept. 2011 – Food Design Conversation, w/ Sang Hoon Degeimbre, ArBA-ESA, Académie royale des Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles

Sept. 2011 – Slow Food PechaKucha Brussels, Goûter Bruxelles, ArBA-ESA, Académie royale des Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles

Nov. 2011 – Open Bread – histoires à suivre – en conception – stay tuned

Jan. 2012 – Video contribution on www.thinkingfooddesign.com  – ParisdesChefs

May 2012 – coCreationcamp Helsinki – coCreationcuisine @ Helsinki World Design Capital

Jun. 2012 – Juror for Food Design – Core 77 Design Awards

Jun. 2012 – London Food Design conference

Sept. 2012 – Goûter Bruxelles – workshop Food Design & Terroirs

Sept. 2012 – PechaKucha Slow Food Design September Brussels

Nov. 2012 – coCreationcuisine

Feb. 2014 > in-progress – Lecturing at Institut Paul Bocuse, Lyon

May 2016 – jury member at StartUp Week-end FoodTech Ghent

2014 – in-progress – professor at Institut Paul Bocuse MCLI – Master in Culinary Leadership and Innovation

January 2022 – jury member eFood for Lisboa April 2022 conference