Yet another tableware project today (it's funny that this week has been filled by discussion about tables here at the lab): Topoware by Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino and Karola Torkos. The point of the project is to "questions the landscape of dining": is territory an adequate notion during a meal? could the observation of dining allows to make assumptions about eating behaviors? What about the way people occupy space?

"By looking at places, maps and especially contour lines, which define a landscape two dimensionally we decided to in turn "outline" the dining experience. This can also be interpreted as "zooming in" from the whole to the single item, from the tablecloth to the placemat down to the utensils.

The lines decorating the tablecloth are mapping the table, defining the space were people sit and interact at the dinner table. The closer to the person's designated space and area of intense interaction, the darker the lines become. The placemat helps keep the experience of complex dining simple or makes the simple dining experience feel special, each layer defining what comes first and where cutlery and tableware should be placed.

In a playful way the lines reappear on the tableware itself, be it plates, bowls and cups to illustrate, label and determine your dining habits."

Why do I blog this? I quite like this "With the Topoware collection, you are how you eat" motto. To me it's very a very pertinent way to make explicit invisibles (or implicit) phenomenon and behavior, especially in unexplored field such as dining.