International Journal of Food Design - Volume 2, Issue 1, 2017

As the presence and visibility of food design grows in academia, synergies are particularly promising with food studies, which promotes and practises the analysis of cultural, social and political issues concerning the production, distribution and consumption of food in its material and cultural aspects, as well as in its social and political implications. The analytical tools developed in food studies have the potential to inform and integrate the practical applications that food design focuses on, while food design methods can help food studies scholars to include applied approaches in their work. The article presents three cases in which food studies analysis and methods were introduced in educational formats otherwise focussed – explicitly or not explicitly – on design.

Food Design depends on development of a comprehensive, shared understanding of both Design and Food. This article argues that this emerging, multidisciplinary field must wrestle with several contentious and nuanced issues on the way to establishing itself as a field of inquiry and a community of practice. First, before we can talk about Food Design, we must understand what we mean by ‘design’ and by ‘food’, the latter being a particularly broad, complex and context-variable landscape. Second, the many fields that come to the design table have different sets of values, vocabulary and premises that present a challenge to interdisciplinary collaboration. And third, the universality, diversity and importance of food require that Food Design takes the broadest possible perspective on the food system and be deliberate about seeking out and including every voice and stakeholder in the conversation. There are all sorts of ways that design decisions may affect food and eating behaviour no matter how far removed from food the decisions may seem, and it is the responsibility of a discipline calling itself Food Design to be explicit in its awareness of that. This article concludes with several illustrative examples of the complexity of Food Design.

This article examines one example of radical innovation and everyday design through a case study of Farm School NYC, an adult education programme in New York City that uses critical pedagogy and popular education to train adult students in urban farming, social justice advocacy and teaching skills. Drawing primarily from research conducted between 2013 and 2014 for a study on urban agriculture and social justice activism, the article illustrates how a network of urban agriculture practitioners, educators and activists created a community-based training programme that takes steps towards a broad vision of a socially just urban food system and that this represents a case of everyday design by radical innovation. It argues that understanding ways in which projects like Farm School NYC infuse radical visions of social change into their day-to-day educational activities is useful for those interested in supporting such transformative work through teaching, farming and gardening and design.

The aim of this article is to explore how food and gastronomy can be integrated within the discipline of design. The first part of the study explores the parallel between gastronomy and design from two perspectives: as system and as sciences. The second part focuses on the special context of Catalonia, where the work of the chef Ferran Adrià has radically transformed gastronomy and, as a consequence, created a network of institutions, designers and studios centered on food.

The last part describes several projects carried out at ELISAVA, which were based on three areas of study: understanding food as a system on the basis of its life cycle and its semantic value; understanding the sensory dimension of food as a material in the context of the Mediterranean culture and studying the creative process of design in parallel with the creative process of gastronomy.

Designers can play a significant role in providing the world population with food that is produced in a sustainable way, is tasty and healthy and can form the centrepiece in culinary experiences. However, design students will need to acquire more knowledge specific for the food domain if they want to qualify as cooperation partners for other food professionals. In addition, because the food domain is vast and diverse, food design education could focus on various application domains, resulting in design students with different profiles.

In this article, I make a distinction between designing for a person who consumes food at home or is eating out. The first case emphasizes the food itself in the home situation, including food production, packaging, food buying, shelf life, preparation, serving, handling leftovers and waste disposal. In the second case, the consumer’s meal experience depends on the atmosphere in the restaurant, interactions with serving staff, the offerings on the menu and quality of the dish. In addition, several processes take place outside the consumer’s view, such as food preparation, storage, personnel management and business administration.

Based on these topics and comparison with adjoining educational curricula, a list of training topics is derived. For all food designers, this consists of general design capabilities, food science, cooking skills, consumer insights and sustainability issues. In addition, the ‘eating at home’ designer should gather knowledge on agricultural production, food technology and food industry business, whereas the ‘eating out’ designer will need to focus mainly on food product knowledge, culinary technology, equipment engineering, restaurant design, consumer dining behaviour and hospitality business.

From 29 February to 4 March 2016, seventeen students of Design and one student of Educational Studies designed and tested recipes for fruit and vegetables with the aim of recycling unsold food. The goal of the experimentation was to verify the strategies aimed at improving homeless people’s access to a certain and healthy daily meal. The workshop was named ‘The Egg of Columbus’ and it was led by two designers and one chef. It took place in a non-professional kitchen, inside a municipal building, which is a location for social inclusion and interdisciplinary education projects. Some homeless adults with prior kitchen experiences actively participated in the workshop, offering their knowledge and collaborating with the students at every stage of the project. The group successfully produced and tested nineteen food transformation strategies. These were recipes that promoted transformation of the surplus produce, preserving its nutritional values and making it available to the deferred consumption. The food design experience offered new perspectives about the food chain for night shelters focusing on the issues of right to food, sustainability and circular economy.

In the past 20 years, two new disciplines have been created and have evolved, first as two separate subjects, and now more and more interconnected: food studies and food design studies. The motive behind the recent success and popularity of education in the agri-food sector lies in the fact that everywhere in the world, the boundaries around the world of food and nutrition have widened. More attention is dedicated to communication, proximity, connections, social and cultural values, and the construction of new food systems. There is a growing need to find new ways to defeat food paradoxes (malnutrition, non-sustainable production systems and the battle against food waste, to name a few). In the past 10 years, the design method has been consolidating into the field of food. Participatory design and co-creation in food experience design became popular along with the discipline of food design. However, the interest in emerging and innovative forms of teaching models in academic and non-academic scenarios in agri-food education is increasing and becoming a challenging issue in food studies pedagogy. The learning objectives of food system education are continuously redefined with the aim of providing food experts with the necessary skills to change food systems and support more sustainable and healthier food value chains. In this article four case studies are presented in which a design approach was applied into different food system education programmes. The author of this article has personally been involved in each of the four scenarios, as a teacher and as a designer. Complex questions concerning the intersection of food system educational contexts, collaboration skills, critical knowledge production and creative approaches are considered in this article. The author presents the dimensions of critical/creative thinking in the scenarios and concludes with a discussion of the challenges and resources for food studies and design educators. The lessons learned in this article provide a starting point for discussing creativity in food system learning and education. On the basis of the analysis carried out in this article, design appears to be an interesting research method to apply to food system education, capable of creating innovative interactions between disciplines and new critical and creative mindsets for food experts. Increasing creativity and critical thinking as learning objectives in food system education will generate more sustainable food cultures and communities.