I was away from the office last week travelling with a troupe of design enthusiasts. Our destination was Bangkok, Thailand, currently known as one of the hot spots for creative talent. Here, wit and humour is often injected into the culture. Apart from the delicious tom yam and foy thong, Bangkok is known as the most creative city in Southeast Asia.
With the other creative peeps from Design Circus, I had the chance to attend the Bangkok Design Festival 2009. The festival itself was held in few places in the city, I however was only able to attend the exhibits at the Bangkok Arts and Cultural Center.
The Bangkok Arts and Cultural Center (BACC), located in the Sukhumvit area, is where you can find many interesting shop lots that sell refined artsy stuff. It showcases a variety of art forms such as graphic design, interiors, architecture, movies, music, theatre, graffiti and more. I spent a couple of hours there checking the exhibits out one by one, until I finally bumped into this particular place and I was in awe.
IceDea is the first food design showroom I’ve encountered
There is no such specialty showroom focusing on food ideas back in my country or even in Malaysia. This store is currently a collaboration with a few local designers and art students in Bangkok producing food related art.
This company was founded by Prima Chakrabandhu Na Ayudhya years ago, when she discovered a niche market in Thailand and decided to design ice cream. As an ice cream designer, she creates unique ice cream flavours for shops and events. After working in Bangkok for 2 years, she won the Fabrica scholarship and has been working in the Design Department of Fabrica, a communication research center of Benetton in Italy.
Before stepping into the store, there is an outline installation of an oreo cheese pie done by her partner Kanticha Chackrabandhu Na Ayudhya. This pie is inspired by the Mola black and white outline collection, and the usage of oreo and cream are used to imitate colors of the collection. Mola Design is a stationary brand where Prima once worked as a stationary designer.
Anyone for some tasty grass?
Inside the show room, there are many interesting food design ideas. One of them is this yummy grass brownie baked (and designed) for S-One football arena's grand opening. The dark chocolate brownie is used to represent a block of soil, layered with poppy seeds as the sands and rocks, then topped off with the custom made foy thong (egg yolk thread) in green. Hmm, interesting right? The details are below.
Soil never tasted this good!
Not only did IceDea come up with the grass pitch brownie but they also designed a football ice cream for the grand opening. This football in a goal cup is a sphere decorated with pentagonal chocolate to create the football pattern. It is served in a net patterned ice cream cup. Goal! Too bad they didn't have it in the store that day, so I took this display picture instead.
They don't only do work for their clients but they also participate in festivals. One of their interesting projects was the sushi ice cream bento set for the ice cream festival that took place in Pattaya this year. Since it was held on an island the theme was to create sushi ice cream. It was made exactly like the fishy menu, but all sweet.
From what I noted down, the salmon is made with papaya, skip jack tuna is made using watermelon, the seaweed salad is made with foy thong, the roe topping was orange chocolate rice, and the wasabi is wasabi ice cream, this is all finished off by the sticky rice made with a milky sticky ice cream. Sweet indeed!
As I walked along, I finally found the best food design idea. The project is called Watt Sandwich for Ploy Saeng, a festival which was held for Thailand’s practical idea market. It is executed by using slices of bread. Each one is exposed to different wattages of heat which leads to color differences.
What a bright and tasty idea!
The burning effect apparently reveals the number of wattage on it. The more wattage that is used, the more legible the writing. And of course, it's more crispy. So cool! I would love to try this one day.
Even though most of the designs are executed into dishes, IceDea also designs culinary utensils and other food related things. One example is this Fali’s straw which was made for Fafi’s opening exhibition at Collete, Paris back in 2006. Fafi is a famous French artist who has strong presence in the graffiti and fine art scenes. Her work is best known for her images of sexy and liberated girls.
With that idea in mind, Prima was inspired to make a playful pout. By replicating these lips to attach to drinking straws, visitors in that exhibition are expected to be part of the drawing. When they drink from the straws, they appear to be live characters in the Fafi atmosphere.
As conceptual as it is, this store also has a unique way in presenting its menu display. Instead of letting customers look at a properly laid out dish, the designer opts to display it carelessly. And what’s interesting is the way the dish's name is printed in a strong san serif typography on the plate.
To tell you the truth, I was a little bit surprised to find out that there is such a profession as an ice cream designer, as written on these Thai designers’ name cards. An ice cream designer’s services range from designing the ice cream concept as well as producing unique ice creams identifying characteristics of the shops including flavour, taste, appearance, texture, colour, decoration, and serving. The ice cream designers also deal with packaging and graphics. Guess it’s a dream job for foodies, aye?
I now know that design is not always tangible, nor it is restricted to product features. Design can be anything related to the human senses, such as taste, scent, etc. And from that perspective, it’s true that everyone loves food, which means there’s more room to be creative with it. Sigh, I love the delicious knowledge I’ve absorbed from this little escapade.
The yummy apple crumble ice cream
And of course, apart from this shop functioning as a food design showroom, this place is also a café with ice cream as its main forte to sell. It has a variety of flavors ranging from basic neapolitan to wicked ones such as cigarette flavour! And to complete the excitement, I tried the tasty Apple Crumble before I left the store. It was worth it for only THB700 (RM7).
There are still a lot of works on display, such as an interactive trash bin by Tenn & Tangram Interaction, Mola-Craft Jungle-Mom made-my mom & N'Tub's products in a bakery concept, Taxidermy, and exclusive necklace designed by L'or… but I guess it won’t be fair to reveal all. So if you happen to visit Bangkok before middle of November, please drop by the showroom and get inspired. Just ride the BTS skytrain (both Sukhumvit and Silom lines) and stop at the Siam station, put aside your hunger and let your mind munch on some inspiration instead.
Visit IceDea showroom at 4th floor Art-rium@BACC (Bangkok Art & Culture Center): 939 Rama I Road Wongmai, Bangkok 10330, Thailand. This showroom will be available up to November 15th, 2009.
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