On Central Saint Martins: URL you'll find a collection of projects that look at food in a myriad of ways. Here, we pause on a handful of that work by graduating students, from spatial design that connects community to its local food system to an animation asking "what happens if a pair of magic mushrooms eat some magic humans?"
It’s hard to think of another subject as all-encompassing as food. The first thought might be sensory pleasure but peer underneath and there’s a tangle of emotional and cultural meanings and planetary implications. Across Central Saint Martins’ graduating class are projects that explore the breadth and depth of this subject. Ideas span in scale from meditations on family and belonging to solutions for broken food systems.
Seowon Park, MA Narrrative Environments
"The 'Ugly Kitchen' is a holistic brand experience that takes people through a journey of circular beauty by utilising discarded food for creating customised beauty products and exploring new ways of looking at waste and the concept of beauty.
While the fashion industry has been criticised for its poor environmental practices, the cosmetic industry is just in smaller volume but more insidious in its use of toxic chemicals, packaging, and waste. By creating a participatory shop environment through apothecary skin consultation to personalised product creation in the kitchen, visitors will learn the fundamental aspects of beauty treatment as the first step towards being mindful consumers benefiting themselves and the environment."
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Danni Cheng, BA Culture, Criticism and Curation
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Danni Cheng, BA Culture, Criticism and Curation
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Danni Cheng, BA Culture, Criticism and Curation
Danni Cheng, BA Culture, Criticism and Curation
"Moveable Feast is a community cookbook made by and for East and Southeast Asian diasporic folks in London, quilting together the generational and geographical trajectories of comfort food recipes.
Meditating on the primal resonance of food, the publication returns to commensality – the practice of eating together – as a humble site through which many of us unpack, tear and tuck into notions of love and deprivation, belonging and alienation. Above all, it is an attempt at harnessing the poetics of foodways as a mode of self-preservation, a call to forge communities instead of taxonomies across the East and Southeast Asian diaspora."
A Drop in the Ocean
Santa Ramaherison, MA Material Futures
Over absorption of atmospheric carbon dioxide by the ocean lowers the ocean's pH, causing a 30% increase in ocean acidity since the industrial era. This change is slowly starting to harm marine ecosystems, but is overlooked by the public as people tend to see the needs of humans as a priority without thinking about the needs of ecosystems.
So how could we, as a collective, help with ocean ecosystems regeneration from an individual to a global scale ?
This project tackles the issue of ocean acidification from the root of CO2 emissions by replacing fossil fuel based materials used for beach activities objects with pH neutralising natural reclaimed materials (oyster shells), natural CO2 absorbing minerals (Olivine) and natural seaweed binders, which not only cuts down CO2 emissions, but also has the added value to help regenerate ecosystems at the end of life of the product.
If the 7.87 billion people on Earth started using this product as much as people use traditional plastic objects on the beach, we could collectively act as a global agent for deacidification all around the world.
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Holly Drinkwater, M ARCH: Architecture
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Holly Drinkwater, M ARCH: Architecture
Holly Drinkwater, M ARCH: Architecture
"Embedded in Somers Town, Camden, 'Common Ground' is the beginnings of a prototypical neighbourhood, one that cultivates social and spatial connections centred around food and care. Seeing food not just as a consumption but as a lens to unite and empower a community under constant threat of urban change.
This project uses situated knowledge, gathered over the past years from a hands-on experience with a number of organisations and community groups. I address the isolated manner in which these organisations operate, to provide a framework for Somers Town Residents to work collaboratively, towards a cohesive neighbourhood evolving around food.
A live project, is at the core of the project, working with an organisation to provide a space for education and training for women and young people in Somers Town, using food as a communication tool and a source of empowerment. From here I have speculated on the future of Somers Town, as if this live project is a springboard, exploring how these principles can be expanded to involve other organisations and communities."
Shroom Mates
And finally, Rosie Windsor, MA Character Animation
Inside a hollow tree trunk two mushroom roommates decide to spice up their evening with some recreational drugs.
