At showroom parties I tend to grab the closest drink and find some friends to kill time with whilst I keep an eye on where the free food is coming from. Sad, I know. I usually try to avoid them as much as possible. However, the other night I attended Viaduct Furniture's dinner to flesh out and mull over design and food.
Viaduct's table talk
The agenda for the intimate evening was a charming cast of speakers who talked to us about their views and experience of food and design... or as Viaduct put it "about how great food and design can improve the quality of life. By exploring some of the links between food, creative design, urban regeneration and communities..." My friend James' latest passions and interests seem to find their way into the events calendar for his showroom. In my experience this kind of his personal approach is a rarefied thing in today's design community. The event had a whimsy and intelligence that dodged the typified design events of cocktails and back-slapping.
The evening was linked to the exhibition Show 4 - Food and Chairs Shared, a collaboration with local chefs to come up with menus to go with chairs. Three amazing restaurants participated with some pretty funny meals. I have included some menus in my earlier post.
Back to the dinner... first up to talk to us was Daniel Charny, curator, designer and senior tutor of the Design Products Programme at the RCA, who pondered if design is in a requiem or a renaissance. He reminds us that craftsman's skills are being lost at an alarming rate, even in food production. Reassuringly, he shares some examples that subvert copyrights and manufacturing norms with more an open-source approach to making through DIY-type experimental design. This process is about pulling things apart and experimenting with processes and materials which the aims to take the power away from the large scale manufacturers. This hands-on approach may help create new crafts and skills.
Which leads us into the realm of DIY with the food industry, such as allotments and foraging as talked about by Sam Clark. Can foraging in the city help to increase knowledge of what is local, seasonal and reconnect city dwellers to their community? Watch this if you like some encouragement.
Rebecca Hossack, (gallerist and pioneer of the proposed Noho Square allotments project) and Euan Mills (Planner and Chatsworth Rd visionary) both talked about their bloody-minded determination to save their local borough's trees and community markets. Both these projects were fundamentally linked to bringing communities together through buying, growing, selling or eating food.
Fleet Architect's Jaime and Kerry at Chatsworth Rd Market
Ultimately, design events are all too absent-minded within furniture and interior supply industry and dumbing down is everywhere. Every decision we make as designer has an impact on the environment and quality of life. Encore Viaduct! ...plus some bloody nice babaganoush too!
Excellent food website
See Viaducts food & design recommendations, read here.
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