Photo: a dessert at Epoka restaurant, Warsaw, Poland
What is design for in a food course that does not include making anything? How can we leverage design methods and practices when students don’t built, shape, or even taste food?
It is almost the end of the semester, a strange and unusual one, to say the least. And one when I have taught the new course “Food in the Arts: Design” in the Food Studies program at NYU, for both graduate and undergraduate students
A few months ago, while I was putting it together, I had shared a few reflections about the impact of class and race on the food system and the role design can play in these matters. For instance, I wondered: „How do objects reflect culture, social structures, and economic dynamics? What do the movements and uses those objects afford tell us about the world of which they are part? The beauty, feel, and functions of certain objects from other cultures makes them ripe for appropriation or, to the least, adaptation.”
In the selection of readings, videos, and podcast I made sure to include material that did not focus exclusively on Western culture and the Global North. The class was very diverse, so we had the opportunity to share examples and projects that reflected this variety, from desserts in Thailand and South America to Chinese consumers’ reactions to COVID.
What is design for in a food course that does not include making anything, at least from a strictly material point of view? How can we leverage design sensibilities, theories, methods, and practices when students don’t built, shape, or even taste food? And above all when they don’t do it together in the same physical space? No way to touch, smell, or taste each other’s work. The pandemic has made these limits painfully felt.
Nevertheless, working at the intersection of food and design allowed us to shed a more direct light on some important aspects of food systems, eating behaviors, and production processes.
First of all, we were constantly reminded of the complexity of systems. A variety of stakeholders, each with different needs and priorities, make planning projects and interventions complicated. Who determines what is necessary or desirable to change or improve in the food system? When we worked on street food, it was immediately apparent that immigrant vendors, food truck entrepreneurs, brick-and-mortar business owners, NGOs, urban designers, health authorities, and the police all look at the same issues from very different points of view. Each actors has access to different resources and enjoy dissimilar levels of power. These aspects cannot be discounted if we want to put justice and equality at the centers of our efforts to improve the food system.
As a consequence, applying forms of human-centered design becomes a priority and, even in that case, the unintended consequences of immediate decisions and broader strategic choices are inevitable. These dynamics are particularly visible when new technologies are introduced, from kitchen gadgets to precision agriculture. Technology turned out to be a recurrent theme in class conversations and in students’ projects. Its pervasive presence in all aspects of the food system interacts in interesting ways with the centrality of the body and emotions in producing, cooking, and eating.
Technology also forced us to look over and over at three aspects of sustainability: environmental, economic, and socio-cultural. We tried to take them into consideration regardless of the specific topic we were examining, from packaging to food waste, from restaurant interior design to kitchen functionality. These reflections often suggested the need to shift from a linear approach to a more circular one in the food system, in which outputs, leftover, and waste becomes useful resources and inputs.
Last but not least, we acknowledged the relevance of culture and social dynamics in all design enterprises. Recognizing their importance can help us support and promote diversity and inclusivity.
Students may not have been able to actually prototype and test the ideas they developed in their projects and researches, but I hope they will take away at least a different approach when considering things: no matter if you are looking at an object, a space, a service, or an experience, it is always fundamental to explore the network of connections that tie them to the world around them, often in unexpected, even surprising ways. A dish is not just a dish: it is a node that congeals places, people, stories, and values. By identifying them and teasing them out, we have a better chance not only at improving our understanding of them, but also at figuring out how to introduce improvements or changes, if and when necessary. That includes working out who the interested parties are and how to give them voice to turn them into co-designers. That’s important not only for design, but also for food