Renderings of the plate in glass.

Ideally, a recycled plastic in some way would make this an even better product. My Formz software isn't the best when it comes to graphics with color, so glass was the more effective look.

This dates back to the beginning of the summer and through out...

I was trying to apply our design into fast food restaurants. Mili and I have talked about foodapy all while having to eat from their plates and it always felt like it was impossible to suggest change in places like mc Donald's...but there's certain restaurants with trays and plates out of Styrofoam.

Many of the things we looked at was how food was stuffed onto a plate. Styrofoam plates get thrown out. Napkins usually fly away when on a tray. When food falls off from a plate, trays aren't considered properly cleaned.

So the result is, the napkins have a pocket, along with the utensils, the main plate in the center is supposed to be the same size as the salad/soup side plates, but because it's higher it would appear bigger.

It's almost impossible to tell what design would look nicer as a tray/plate. The final look has a asian feel to it. which isn't so bad.

One last thing i wasn't able to show is that the two side plates are the feet of the tray.

À la recherche du temps perdu

"À la recherche du temps perdu" or "In Search of Lost Time" by Marcel Proust (1871-1922)

The excerpt on Marcel Proust's description of la Madeleine read to us by Rhona in the fall 2010 Special Topics class from this book was in my mind the lightbulb that explained what we were trying to achieve with our semester-long project when it first began.

It was about taste, memory, satisfaction, joy, etc..

So much of this is removed in our "urban" or "student" or "fast" way of living. Food is seen as caloric intake and some are obsessed with counting while others don't care or don't have time to count. Marcel understood through his rediscovery of a childhood snack that in order to truly benefit form life, we need to stop every once and a while.

communal experience with plates

Our first experience of eating as a group from the Slo plates happened at Marian's house during a get-together. We hadn't originally planned to eat but as the sun was going down we realized after all of the chatting and laughing, that we were hungry! Someone mentioned ordering Chinese food and many other concurred.

When the food arrived, everybody's side dish orders came in rectangular boxes that were apparently mean as a single serving, A portion for 2 was shared among 4 and a portion of 1 was shared among too. What was amazing was that we had plenty to spare afterwards.

Whereas we might have otherwise each taken a standard plate and followed its dictation of how much to fill it up with, we luckily had access to our porcelain plates and the act of sharing became more natural and everybody was able to customize their plate to their fancy.

The food which otherwise is just meant to be seen in bulk, developed some personality on our plates and definitely looked more appetizing.

From previous experience, I had purchased a styrofoam box of 10 peanut butter dumplings and because I was alone and wanted to try them (it was my first time) , I was obliged to finish it all. In this situation, Marian and I shared a 1 person serving of peanut butter dumplings and due to their arrangement on my plate, combined with the shared company, these were especially more delicious than the 10 I ate on my own.

The food had a focal presence and the interaction was most definitely not passive.

Personal discretion was allowed and very little could be put on a plate without looking like some were eating more than others.

The food looked tastier.

A small handful of nachos and hummus became a combination by imagining what else could go in the middle as opposed to salsa.

A little went a long way.

individual experience with plates

As I got to keep one of the extra "failed" plates, I decided to try myself out as a guinea pig and see what it was like eating my meals from it. So whenever I remembered (being a new habit and all, I often forgot!), I would transfer whatever meal I made into the plate.

The first thing I noticed was how little it took to fill them up, and even though I knew this, I couldn't tell from looking. To my eye (and feel, consequently the weight of the plates themselves added to the experience) it seemed like a well filled plate that was appetizing.

The second thing I noticed was how awkward it was to eat certain foods as opposed to others. This required me to be more careful and attentive. It slowed me down and often I felt full but not to the rim by the end of one serving. This isn't to say that I didn't go for seconds! But what happened was that, after my first serving I unknowingly stopped and did something else, when I felt like I could have a bit more, I went in for a second serving. I hardly went over 2 servings.

I was amazed at how well it worked, and how I "mindlessly" behaved this way. In comparison to the large flat plates we have at home, where I would usually put my food, I would fill it up completely and usually by the end I would feel extremely full to the point of fatigue sometimes.

Eating from these plates has eliminated that feeling for me.

The one flaw I found was that it didn't cohere with the dishes cabinet so well, it has its own shape so it doesn't blend well with the rest of the plates, making it difficult to store and requires a bit more effort for placement so that it doesn't get in the way. As it is now, I can't imagine having more than 4 fit on one shelf.

One last thing I would note was that I enjoyed my meals more, I'm not a great cook, but this plate made the food that I cooked look good and somehow made them taste better and I know that that's where the illusion lies, but even so I was fooled!

Food Design 6 competition submission

On June 15th we submitted our slo plates to the Food Design 6 competition as the following "plan" image and one page text explaining the project.

The one page written submission for Food Design 6:

The Slo collection is a new line of tableware meant to invite Satiation, create a better eating Lifestyle, and Opulent dinner setting. Through the shape of the plate, portions and perception is no longer controlled in the same way. This Design was inspired by the variations of eating behaviors from culture to culture. Specifically, one summer was spent in Acquapendente in the Lazio region of Italy, where the active environment made it much easier to enjoy the abundance of food that we ate. Coming back to Montreal, it became evident that it was not easy to enjoy neither the quantity nor the quality of the food as we previously did. In fact, much of the anticipation before the meal usually ends with a feeling of overconsumption and regret. From there, we wanted to investigate where satisfaction lay.

It wasn’t easy to relate Montreal to a village in Italy, we had to look at the way the North American culture exposed food. Of course, we knew that there wasn’t much we can say or do about advertisements on billboards and television but they weren’t so much of a direct influence when we think of sitting down and having a meal. We knew there was something more to it so we researched eating behaviors and food in culture to find a co-relation.

After reading Brian Wansink’s “Mindless Eating”; David A. Kessler’s ”The end of Overeating”; and Paul Roberts’ “The End of Food”, we used their experimentation and brought it to the breakfast table which was our drawing board of personal discovery. We didn’t just go to our mindless routine; we studied our plate from what it held to how much we were eating. 20 minutes later, there was still half the plate left to finish. Just by the simple fact that the plate could tell us how much we had left to eat it was subliminally telling us how much we should be eating. But just like any awkward setting when you have too much to eat you feel the need to keep going either it’s a family dinner, or you can’t allow food to go to waste.

Instead of putting our frustrations on ourselves we realized that the problem really derived from the shape of the plate. It was just this flat shapeless pit where it becomes so easy to put huge portions. At this stage we became confident that what really needed investigation was how plates can be reshaped and how do people react to it. With only the wood and metal shop available to us, the only resource we had was the lathe machine which is basically a wood turning wheel and carving tools that dig in and create the symmetrical shapes.

After a year’s work, we came up with 7 series of plates, 4 of which remain the most popular and sought after shapes. What was interesting was exaggerating the criteria that form the plate i.e.: the border, the depth, the hollowness, and the size. We decided to keep the size the same as you would find in a restaurant because we live in a culture that believes in the visual abundance. This is the only way to step away from the traditional diet appearance. All the variations were meant to take away space from the plate but also to create a playful environment so that you think about where and how you place the food. In turn, the shapes of the plates are meant to make the food look bigger and still fill the size of the plate. This interaction allows the user to slow down enough to enjoy the environment and food against the submissive need to over eat.