Dining Design - Final Presentation

After consultation with my teachers about early concepts, the decision was made to go ahead with outdoor furniture concept which would be used for casual Australian dining in a variety of arrangements.

The Slice casual outdoor dining furniture is designer to represent the Australian culture and their way of eating. It's a versatile product that can adapt to a range of different requirements, all while holding up against everything the Australian environment can throw at it.

Storage:

When it's not in use, the product pivots 90 degrees vertically to free up space in the backyard.

Day Bed:

The product forms a day bed with all the pieces of flat on the ground so the user can spend some time in the sun reading a book.

One Sided Dining:

By rotating either end of the Slice, the user will end up with a large dining table and a single row of seats for a small family meal.

Two Sided Dining: 

In order to accommodate a large group of people, the other side can be rotated in order to form a table with two rows of seating for up to 6 people.

The final presentation for the Dining Design project required the presentation of progress models as well as final concept models, multiple posters, technical drawings and an aural presentation. Below are both images of the models as well as copies of the posters and technical drawings.

Dining Design - Concept Presentation

After a few weeks to work on concepts, we were tasked with returning to class with at least three concept posters and accompanying models to put forward our ideas to our tutors and others in the class. As Australian cuisine involves foods from all different cultural backgrounds, the majority of the concepts I developed were centered around the foods we eat. I chose to look more towards the casual outdoor meals and ended up looking for ways to bring the fun and playful experience of take away fish and chips to the home.

Concept 1 involved recreating a traditional take away plate for fish and chips and taking it from a disposable one time use form to being something with a longer lifecycle and more class. The result is a press molded porcelain plate which recreates the fold lines of the original in order to keep the traditional roots.

 

Similarly to concept 1, concept 2 was also focused on recreating the playfulness of eating fish and chips outdoors but within the home. This concept however, did so through appearing to be a bowl made of newspaper although actually being constructed of press molded porcelain.

And just to be completely different, concept 3 was designed with the way Australians eat outdoors for casual meals, or more formal family meals. This concept involved a rearrangeable  furniture setup which could adapt to a few different dining styles. In order to keep with the traditional look of Australian outdoor furniture, this concept was to be constructed through the repetition of a single shape which would be made out of Teak.

Dining Design - Understanding the Culture

Dining Design is the second major project for this assignment and as you could probably realise from the name, it's to do with the food we eat and the way in which we eat it. The project began by choosing a culture which had significance to us, either through it being our heritage or something we were interested in learning about. From there we were to set out and research the cultures traditional eating, dining, food preparation and food based celebrations.

The overall aim of the project was then to design a product, furnishing or implement that would enrich the dining experience of the chosen culture. 

Being Australian, it only made sense for me to design for the Australian outdoor dining culture and the Australian barbeque.

For the first week of submissions, we were each required to work on an essay which defines the cultural and social significance of a dining rituals history and also make a presentation poster which can be used to graphically describe the rituals traditions and social significance. This poster is attached below.