Root to Tip
Engaging conversations around the future of sustainable eating
Root to Tip explores the role of design in sustainable food practices. Together with innovation designers Anushritha Sunil and Luisa Charles, we developed a zero waste, low-carbon sustainable food experience and workshop hosted during Pratt Earth Action Week. Pulling from contemporary debate and researching different strategies tackling sustainable food systems Root to Tip is built off a framework that incorporates 4 different sustainable food strategies strategies - seasonal, local, plant-based, and zero waste.
The sustainable supper itself was an outcome of a co-design cooking experiment. No future proofing scheme for the climate emergency anywhere can be complete without considering food, and therefore this discourse originates out of a desire to bring together individuals of different ages and across various disciplines over a collaborative dinner series, and have a seat at the table, expanding the conversations around food systems. The kitchen was used as a place of experimentation and the aim of the experiment was to co design a low carbon meal. The resulting multi course meal was served to 20 guests in a discourse format at the School of Design, Pratt Institute.
/ Workshop Design
In collaboration with Luisa Charles, Anushritha Sunil, and GrowNYC x Pratt Farm to Campus, Pratt Social Practice Kitchen. Showcased at Pratt Earth Action Week 2021. Showcasing at the Science Gallery London Spring 2024.
Images by Marco Dare
The meal revolved a fully circular and zero-waste system where the waste from one element of the meal was incorporated into other elements of the meal. Expert food sustainability members of the community were invited to share in the discourse their perspectives on the the future of sustainable eating and engage with community members. Alike to the circular system of each course, the seating was designed to allow a rotation of people after each course enabling everyone to converse with each attendee.
Pratt Social Practice Kitchen is a mobile kitchen, designed by Amanda Huynh, to be a site of interdisciplinary investigation across the School of Design. We were inspired by this designed object and wondered how we could use food as both a material and tool for communication and allow for an exploration of sustainable food practices with designers, food experts, community activists and food enthusiasts.
Design Research and Development
Reflections & Future Work
This experiment can be a precursor to a potential design model for food research in design schools and campuses. Every campus should implement a food security policy and take actions to make fresh produce accessible to the students. This can be a key factor in encouraging students and designers to incorporate food research in their design processes, giving agency to schools and campuses in the larger network of sustainable food policies at a city scale.
After an initial proof of concept, we propose to test a series of similar dinners in different cities with different themes to bring people together and encourage the exchange of experiences, issues and solutions across disciplines and also, perhaps, to spark inspiration and create new friendships. We aim to consolidate the learnings into a book and create an enriching pool of stories, projects and resources for future food designers and local communities. Through these discourses we want nudge people to investigate different issues and topics in cities using the lens of food, providing an opportunity to turn the ideas into action through interdisciplinary inspiration and collaboration.