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.

Urban Tribes - Final Presentation

The Urban Tribes project has finally reached a conclusion and while earlier on I may not have felt too inspired about the whole project, I'm quite pleased with my final product. At first I felt a bit skeptical about actually picking a tribe within society then doing research and making assumptions about the lifestyles of that particular group. While I still don't fully agree with the practice, I can definitely say that it's played a major role in the development of this project and all the earlier notes have given me something to refer to from time to time during the design process.

I've attached the posters which will be submitted for presentation along with the model below but for easier reading the text below comes straight from the posters.

The design is sculpted by both the metrosexual fashion and the metrosexual lifestyle. Similarly to metrosexual fashion, the product consists of layers, which individually are quite simple, however when pieced together form a more complex result.

Continuing with the idea of fashion, the colours of the wood used to construct the product, reflect the colours commonly found within the metrosexual wardrobe.

The magazine rack has the ability to contain five magazines. Enough for the modern metrosexual to keep up to date with current trends without cluttering their home with past issues.

Within the rack, the magazines each have their own position to slot in to when they're not being read."

Presentation Poster 1:

Presentation Poster 2:

Presentation Poster 3:

General Assembly Drawing:

CNC Routing Cutting Diagram:

Presentation Model:

Urban Tribes - Concept Generation Part 2

Sometimes inspiration can be hard to come by but that soon changed when I decided it would be best to force myself to mess around with some foam core and make a few models. Fortunately the results were successful until I ran out of foam core and sharp blades.
This led on to spending a day in the workshop with block of blue foam and plenty of time to experiment. The results were a heap of models which will hopefully prove helpful in the near future.

After spending a few days working on sketching out ideas on paper and in foam, I decided to spend some time modelling a few of my top concepts and rendering them to better understand what the result could potentially be.
This resulted in the four concepts shown below.

Concept 1

 Concept 2

Concept 3

Concept 4

Design on Show

The Design on Show project called for a visit to the Sydney Design Week exhibitions which were situated throughout the city. The aim of the project was to visit the design venues then to review and critique the exhibitions before communicating our thoughts on the venues through both writing and modelling. Below is both the written content from my submission along with images of the final A3 presentation.

Workshopped

Workshopped is currently in its 10th year of operation as a part of Sydney Design Week. Set up in the lower floors of Chifley Plaza, it’s displays the works of emerging designers and aims to help them make connections and create relationships with the rest of the design industry.
   
The works selected for the exhibition have all been selected in order to nurture emerging Australian designers. In order to be considered for the exhibition, designers had to respond to the proposition that “great design endures, demands attention and is fit for purpose”
   
As I walked around the exhibit it came to my attention very early on that many of the showcased works utilised the latest in both materials and manufacturing. In contrast to the Australian International Design Awards, which seemed to take a very technological approach, the workshopped exhibition seemed to be more focused on industrial processes used in the creation of the product
   
While the location and set up of the exhibition is obviously chosen to maximise exposure, in my opinion I feel it really doesn’t suit the works on display.  While I’d go so far as to say I find the majority of the works inspiring, I found the setting at the base of Chifley Plaza amongst a mass of lunch time conversation to be major distraction which at times made it hard to even concentrate on the surrounding works. The chaotic scene I describe however doesn’t end there. The fact that the lower half of the exhibit basically had two main functions: (1) Serve as a walkway; (2) Show of the Workshopped exhibition. For this reason, it often felt as though there was no way to escape the crowd and peacefully take in the exhibition
   
The Workshopped exhibition, to me has to be the most important of the exhibitions showcased as a part of Sydney Design Week. It showcases young talent and gives them the opportunity to show the can perform at a high enough level to impress the masses of not only design fans but even the people who happen to be making their way through the building and stop off at the exhibit along the way.

Australian International Design Awards

The Australian International Design Awards, like workshopped are help yearly as part of Sydney Design Week at the Powerhouse Museum. The exhibition showcases the works completed by graduates in their final year of university.   
Contrastingly to the designs selected for workshopped, the designs shown in the Australian International Design Awards are all the product of final year projects by university students around the country. The work displayed, unlike Workshopped, which has a focus on technology and manufacturing processes, seems to be more focused on innovation and the incorporation of new technology.
   
While the work within the exhibit is great to look at and learn more about as it’s something I’ll be engaging in during the coming years, I have to say that the exhibition as a whole really lack a soul and a presence. The exhibit is horribly small and cramped to the point that some of the works are nearly on top of each other, reaching out for a little bit more space. Unfortunately for the designers, the nothing more positive can be said in reference to the location of the exhibition within the museum. During Sydney Design Week, the markets filling the corridors all but block off and sight of the AIDA and if it weren’t for the fact that I’d visited the exhibit on previous occasions I would have found myself asking for directions. Unlike workshopped which is positioned in a busy place where people actually get to see the designs, the AIDA exhibition seems almost like a foreign territory to the paying customers of the Powerhouse Museum who casually stroll past it without knowing what they’ve missed.
   
While the setup of the exhibition may not accentuate what it has to offer, the products displayed really are what we can look forward to in the future. For viewers of the AIDA, the works are created by the young recently graduated designers who will be designing long into the future and continuing to turn out revolutionary technologies such as the LONGREACH Buoyancy Deployment System, which has the potential to save lives without putting the lives of others such as lifeguards at risk.