D Day Preview, Zagreb / June 2013

The work in progress show is taking place during D-Day in Zagreb with an emphasis on experimentation and a group discussion in situ with designer colleagues and visitors. 

A pilot project Croatian Holiday preceded a more detailed vision of Design Tourism platform, within which thematically more precise projects will be developed in the future.

Narrowing down the annual topics should be interpreted as a need to target specific touristic content that is currently either under-developed, imported from abroad or is well developed (as in the case of trendy gastronomic scene development), but not followed by appropriate design code.

The first in a series of curatorial concepts, Hungry Designers, is following partly the methodology of the last year project, in terms of duration and project development process, but is, at the same time fundamentally different. It is intended exclusively towards gastronomic sector of tourism, and materialized through projects focused on the design of food and its by-products.

Western European scene is already for years busy practicing a somewhat elitist discipline called food design, which is in Croatia at any rate insufficiently promoted and so new that it is often often misinterpreted. One of its imperatives is an interdisciplinary approach that envolves culinary art, nutritionism, visual arts, graphic and product design, with the aim of creating a better and more intense experience of eating culture. Croatia is rich in naturally grown foods, and as such follows the global trends that praise healthy diet. On the other hand, the Croatian culinary heritage is an eclectic blend of influences from nearby countries, which makes it altogether a high-quality base for creative and experimental dealing with food.

Food design differentiates several different aspects; food as a design material that can be transformed in it shape or content through rethinking taste, consistency, temperature, color, texture or innovative combinations of ingredients; the design of everyday objects used for preparing, serving, packaging and communicating foods to the end consumers, regardless of the context; design scenarios that create interaction of people and foods and accompanying food enjoying rituals in connection to location, season, time of day, type of consumption, etc.

Hungry Designers as a food design collection inspired by tourism consists of projects that are largely part of the mentioned categorization, but are each in its own way contributing to a different semantics by introducing different aspects of material and immaterial culture in new and unexpected ways.

A pinch of salt

by Manufakturist