By Gabrielle Kennedy / 28-06-2012

Food design is about shapes, textures, sound and tastes, but it also possesses a powerful social element making it a valuable contributor to the growing need to change the way food is made and distributed.

“It is going to be large and exciting,” says Marije Vogelzang, Holland’s most celebrated food designer.

In the exhibition Vogelzang broadly explores a lot of issues from farming, anorexia and feederism, to laboratory-made meats with the potential to meet protein requirements.

She talks enthusiastically about Honey & Bunny – an Austrian duo who delve into industrial food design and all its design issues.  “It is fascinating because it is something people both take for granted but rarely see,” Vogelzang says.  “A fish-finger, for example, is a complex design object and has an equal right to be in a design museum as a chair.”

Vogelzang’s goal for “Eating by Design” is to communicate the more humanistic side of food – everything from the weird to the mundane – which when revealed can help advance the very serious discussion on the future of food.  

She did not want it to be abstract or futuristic and worked hard to ensure that it was accessible and never elitist.   “Food is for everyone,” she insists. This matches with her own personal approach to food design, which focuses a lot on emotions.  “I am interested in the ritual and social relations,” she says.

Running alongside the exhibition will be a food film festival and also a vegetable orphanage – “It’s odd because the vegetables that the farmers discard are the ones that somehow touch us – like two carrots growing together into a hug.”


“Eating by Design” is a Premsela, the Netherlands Institute for Design and Fashion project.

Saturday 30 June–Sunday 30 September 2012
Opening hours: Tuesday–Sunday, 11am–6pm
Admission: €5, students €3, 14 and under free
Opening: Friday 29 June
Guerrilla gardening: Monday 18–Friday 29 June (admission free)

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