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Smart Tray: Speculating The Future New Zealand Dining Experience

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This research proposes a design solution that embraces New Zealander’s proclivity for pervasive digital technology and that aims to meet the needs and desires of the future Kiwi dining experience. This research proposition is directed by an approach that situates itself between future forecasting and speculative design, whereby the design output is viable while simultaneously capable of provoking critical reflection about the future of design as it relates to domestic dining appliances. The development of a design solution, the Smart Tray, encapsulates these aims and has been guided by a comprehensive investigation into the points of connection that exist between culture, technology, design and social behaviour. The Smart Tray seeks to acknowledge New Zealand’s history while embodying its contemporary domestic dining culture in proposing an appliance-device that embraces digital technology as part of the everyday dining experience. This research has been supported by the application of various methodologies inclusive of the critical review of academic literature that has functioned to frame and support the scope of the research proposition; case studies in which a selection of Kiwi households have been interviewed, observed, and their behaviours analysed in order to gain a greater understanding of contemporary dining habits and their relationship with pervasive digital technologies at home; and iterative design development inclusive of concept sketching, sketch modelling, experience prototyping, and user feedback. Although this research is contextualised within New Zealand, the general research outcomes are applicable to a wide market. The outputs produced as a result of this research, including the exegesis and design of the final Smart Tray, are intended to offer a valuable critical perspective and viable future design solution that will aid in furthering the professional field of dining design.

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This research proposes a design solution that embraces the formation of socially engaged communities that aims to meet the needs and desires of New Zealand’s future inclusive dining experience within public spaces. This research proposition is directed by an approach that situates itself between future forecasting and speculative design, whereby the design output is viable while simultaneously capable of provoking critical reflection about the future of design in relation to the design’s targeted users. The development of a design solution, Come Dine With We, encapsulates these aims and has been guided by a comprehensive investigation into the points of connection surrounding inclusivity between interior architecture, social innovation, commensality and social behaviour around personality types.
Come Dine With We seeks to acknowledge New Zealand’s history whilst embodying its contemporary personal and public dining culture in proposing a selection of concepts that features a timber composite design with a range of adjustable components suitable for the encouragement of inclusivity around New Zealand’s dining experience. This research has been supported by the application of various methodologies inclusive of the critical review of academic literature that has functioned to frame and support the scope of this research proposition; current examples of public spaces within New Zealand offering qualities of commensality in addition to case studies were analysed and observed to gain more understanding of how the current scenario of inclusive dining is being achieved within New Zealand; and iterative design development inclusive of concept sketching, digital modelling and conversations with peers. Although this research is contextualised within New Zealand, the general research outcomes are applicable to a wide market. The outputs produced as a result of this research, including the exegesis and design of Come Dine With We, are intended to offer a valuable critical perspective and viable future design solution that will aid in furthering the design of inclusive dining within public spaces.

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Speculative design proposal for an adaptable kitchen table

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Through researching the everyday experience of home and domestic space, it was evident that the kitchen table is not merely a place for eating, but a hive of activity and interaction. Amid all the home-related activities - eating, baking, socialising and relaxing – it also often becomes a desk for those who work from home. With the blurring of boundaries between home life and work in mind, the above images document a speculative table design that allows people to create and reconfigure different areas within the same surface and space to re-establish both physical and temporal boundaries between activities.

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optimal covid-19 dining room layout according to maths 

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optimal covid-19 dining room layout according to maths 

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Dining Rooms: Their Importance and Possibilities in Plans

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We review some projects to classify the most common ways to implement dining tables in architectural projects.

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‘No Place For Discontent’: A History Of The Family Dinner In America

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The dining room, with the dining table at its center, didn’t catch on in America before the late 1700s. These rooms — and the family meals held in them — became a place to cultivate social values.

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House & Garden's friendly resident decorating columnist and agony aunt Fiona McKenzie Johnston considers whether the dining room has had its day in favour of kitchen dining, and if so, how do you create a sense of occasion when the washing up is in your eyeline?

Dear Fiona,

We've recently bought a fairly standard terraced house in north-west London, and, like so many have done before, we're planning to extend the ground floor out into the garden in order to have more room. However, before we find an architect, we need to know exactly what we really want - and here my husband and I differ in opinion. I would like a proper dining room and a smaller kitchen, and he thinks we should go all out on a vast kitchen-diner that's also sort of a playroom for the children, so that the sitting room can (occasionally) serve as his study. What's more, every single one of our friends thinks that he's right, and I'm wrong, and tell me that dining rooms are dead and we'll never use it and that, if I do have one, I'll always regret it.

However I think I would use it. I grew up with a dining room (he didn't) so they're already ingrained in how I live, and I like the idea of all of us - including our young children - sitting down to Sunday lunch, and my husband and I eating there together once the children have gone to bed, and it being a proper meal - not a meal with the detritus of cooking and life spread all around us, and a television on (yup, my husband wants a television in the kitchen, and he's a sports addict, so I know we'll end up with it on during meals.) Most of all, I want Christmas there, with the table beautifully laid and special china and the silver polished and candles twinkling. Can Christmas really be as special if the washing up is always in your eyeline? Also - I'm just a bit over the whole massive kitchen thing. Kitchens don't really do it for me - I simply can't get excited about cabinetry and appliances.

Please let me know how I can persuade my husband of the need for a dining room - or tell me why I should focus on a kitchen-diner after all? I mean, which approach is better? Is the dining room really dead?

Love,
An Appreciator of Formality XX
Dear Formality,

It was Dorothy Draper who wrote "eating is really one of your indoor sports. You play three times a day, and it's well worth while to make the game as pleasant as possible." So thank you for your letter, and bringing up an issue which is not to be sniffed at. It's also not something that I can resolve on your behalf. For while, yes, Nicola Harding advises in her Dos and Don'ts of Decorating that you should consider your house fantasies, asking "have you dreamt about Christmas looking and feeling a certain way?" (and evidently, you have), a house has to function for all those who are living in it - and this particularly applies to houses where space is not necessarily in abundance.

Let's start with looking at how this conundrum came to be - for you're not the only one pondering the benefits of a separate dining room and kitchen over a kitchen-diner. Often knowing past reasoning can be helpful when it comes to contemporary decision making, and it may surprise you to know to that a dining room is a comparatively modern invention, at least in western Europe. In the Middle Ages, the nobility and their courts ate in great halls, which were the original multipurpose room ( entertainment also took place there, and it was the room where most of the household would sleep - on the floor). It wasn't until about the mid-18 th century that the idea of smaller, more refined parties took hold, and great houses started to have separate dining rooms (which frequently necessitated significant building work and the addition of further wings.) The trickle-down effect meant that by the mid-19 th century, the dining room was mainstream - not least because the Victorians loved a separate room for every function.

The kitchen, meanwhile, was the preserve of servants, and that remained the case until the great employment shake-up that followed the second world war - the number of men and women employed in domestic service dropped by half between 1940 and 1950. At the same time the housebuilding programme of the 1950s (one third of British houses had been seriously damaged or demolished during the war) produced smaller houses, with fewer - though larger - rooms that could be used as general living areas. And, as the kitchen became the location of dinner parties - cooked by the hostess herself - so it became a hub for design trends (including the fitted cabinets du jour) and the most up-to-date appliances. Seemingly, Victorian and Edwardian terraces have been being extended to match ever since, and, seven decades on, many are those who aspire to a kitchen by Plain English, deVOL or Neptune, and agonise over an Everhot versus an Aga.

Unarguably, there are benefits both ways. "If you like to cook and entertain at the same time, having the dining table in your kitchen allows you to do both in a relaxed manner," points out Stephanie Barba-Mendoza, who has just extended her ground floor to enable exactly this. Tori Murphy has recently renovated her home to incorporate the same; "we have three small children and I could not imagine any other way of preparing meals, feeding, chatting, doing homework, dancing around etc. with them all - it's where we all hang out and I love it." Having said that - and having young-ish children myself - I know that there are times when we need to be able to close doors so that the child who needs silence to do a maths worksheet isn't distracted by a younger sibling's out-loud phonics work. However, if you are going for separate rooms, there are a couple of important considerations, relating to light (worth remembering is that many Victorian dining rooms tended towards distinctly gloomy) and flow. Both affect the comfort of use. For, whatever your hopes and dreams, I do know of several houses with seldom visited dining rooms and they inevitably become, as Penny Morrison identifies, "the most boring room in the house." Her solution for these circumstances is secondary use: "double it as a library - fill it with books and flowers - and it will come to life." It could equally serve as the room that your husband uses as his (occasional) study, somewhere for you children to do their homework and music practice (providing it's easy for you or your husband to be near them in that room or an adjacent room, which comes back to flow), the room that you use for boardgames or sewing projects - or indeed all of these.

But before you think that I've answered in your favour, I'd like to return to the idea of the kitchen-diner, and suggest that you reconsider what it could be - for, as we all know, there's more than one way to skin a cat.

Firstly - as you're more interested in dining rooms than kitchens - I want to point out that this extension could just as much be a dining room which has a bit of kitchen in it, as vice-versa; it's simply a question of giving it a finish that leans more towards glamour than utilitarian, more towards the great hall of the Middle Ages than the living room of the 1950s. Focus on freestanding kitchen furniture rather than fitted cabinets, use copper instead of stainless steel, find tiles that will glint in the candlelight, and absolutely indulge in your love of pattern via wallpaper and textiles. Regarding the detritus of cooking, Louise Wickstead of Sims Hilditch suggests creating a small pantry or utility space with a sink and a dishwasher to "keep pots, pans, and prep items neatly concealed during significant events." Alternatively - or as well - put the lighting on different circuits so that, as Tori puts it, you can "shut down parts you don't want to see and illuminate the areas you do," which basically comes down to leaving the washing up in the dark. Add a beautiful ottoman as a toybox, and a comfortable sofa, and you've also got an area for pre-dinner drinks.

Then, while of course you'll know that you can create different areas in an open plan room with rugs, different levels and ceiling treatment, remember that you can also physically separate them (without installing full-run walls) by way of floor to ceiling bookcases, Crittal doors, curtains (consider channelling John Fowler for the ultimate in theatricality), or a combination of all of these. And in this manner, both you and your husband get what you want. He'll have his large open plan kitchen-diner, and you'll have a (sometimes) separate dining room where you can have the Christmas of your dreams without a view of the kitchen, and a sitting room area cum children's playroom with a television that can similarly be shut off (although the occasional tele-supper can be rather lovely.)

The ultimate decision over separate rooms versus open plan is going to be informed by the space you have available, and how you think you can best use it. I'd suggest that you go through the gallery of images of dining rooms and kitchen-diners on this site, for there's a variety of clever ideas that may provide inspiration, and please remember that whatever you decide, the location of a table does not affect your ability to dress it, and thus convey a sense of occasion. Which isn't to say that dining rooms are dead - they're not - but as how we live evolves, so do our houses. As Elsie de Wolfe frequently said, it all comes down to "suitability, suitability, suitability!"

With love,

Fiona XX

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Dear Fiona: is the dining room truly dead?

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House & Garden's friendly resident decorating columnist and agony aunt Fiona McKenzie Johnston considers whether the dining room has had its day in favour of kitchen dining, and if so, how do you create a sense of occasion when the washing up is in your eyeline?

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Nearly 80% of designers working on new home communities said dining rooms became less important over the past year, according to research shared with Axios.

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Nearly 80% of designers working on new home communities said dining rooms became less important over the past year, according to research shared with Axios.

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Dining rooms are disappearing from new floor plans

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Home builders and buyers want to save money.

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After my mother passed away and my brother went to study in New Zealand, the first thing that really felt different was the dinner table. My father and I began eating separately. We went out to dinners with our friends, ate sandwiches in front of our computers, delivery pizzas while watching movies. Some days we rarely saw each other at all. Then, a few weeks before I was set to leave for university, my father walked downstairs. "You know, I think we should start eating together even if it's just you and me," he said. "Your mother would have wanted that." It wasn't ideal, of course-the meals we made weren't particularly amazing and we missed the presence of Mom and my brother-but there was something special about setting aside time to be with my father. It was therapeutic: an excuse to talk, to reflect on the day, and on recent events. Our chats about the banal-of baseball and television-often led to discussions of the serious-of politics and death, of memories and loss. Eating together was a small act, and it required very little of us-45 minutes away from our usual, quotidian distractions-and yet it was invariably one of the happiest parts of my day.

Sadly, Americans rarely eat together anymore. In fact, the average American eats one in every five meals in her car, one in four Americans eats at least one fast food meal every single day, and the majority of American families report eating a single meal together less than five days a week. It's a pity that so many Americans are missing out on what could be meaningful time with their loved ones, but it's even more than that. Not eating together also has quantifiably negative effects both physically and psychologically.

Using data from nearly three-quarters of the world's countries, a new analysis from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) found that students who do not regularly eat with their parents are significantly more likely to be truant at school. The average truancy rate in the two weeks before the International Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), a test administered to 15-year-olds by the OECD and used in the analysis as a measure for absenteeism, was about 15 percent throughout the world on average, but it was nearly 30 percent when pupils reported they didn't often share meals with their families.
How then do we eat better, not just from a nutritional perspective, but from a psychological one as well?
Children who do not eat dinner with their parents at least twice a week also were 40 percent more likely to be overweight compared to those who do, as outlined in a research presentation given at the European Congress on Obesity in Bulgaria this May. On the contrary, children who do eat dinner with their parents five or more days a week have less trouble with drugs and alcohol, eat healthier, show better academic performance, and report being closer with their parents than children who eat dinner with their parents less often, according to a study conducted by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University.

There are two big reasons for these negative effects associated with not eating meals together: the first is simply that when we eat out-especially at the inexpensive fast food and take-out places that most children go to when not eating with their family-we tend not to eat very healthy things. As Michael Pollan wrote in his most recent book, meals eaten outside of the home are almost uniformly less healthy than homemade foods, generally having higher fat, salt, and caloric content.

The other reason is that eating alone can be alienating. The dinner table can act as a unifier, a place of community. Sharing a meal is an excuse to catch up and talk, one of the few times where people are happy to put aside their work and take time out of their day. After all, it is rare that we Americans grant ourselves pleasure over productivity (just look at the fact that the average American works nearly 220 hours more per year than the average Frenchman).

In many countries, mealtime is treated as sacred. In France, for instance, while it is acceptable to eat by oneself, one should never rush a meal. A frenzied salad muncher on the métro invites dirty glares, and employees are given at least an hour for lunch. In many Mexican cities, townspeople will eat together with friends and family in central areas like parks or town squares. In Cambodia, villagers spread out colorful mats and bring food to share with loved ones like a potluck.

In her book Eating Together, Alice Julier argues that dining together can radically shift people's perspectives: It reduces people's perceptions of inequality, and diners tend to view those of different races, genders, and socioeconomic backgrounds as more equal than they would in other social scenarios.

It hasn't always been the case that Americans don't prioritize eating together and eating slowly. In 1950, Elizabeth David, who was recognized as the sort of soul-stirring American culinary evangelist du moment, as perhaps Alice Waters or David Lebovitz is today, published A Book of Mediterranean Food. She wrote that great food is simple. She proposed that meals didn't have to come from fancy or trendy restaurants, and that enjoying basic meals with loved ones makes for the best eating. In one particularly salient passage, she writes:

"In the shade of the lemon grove I break off a hunch of bread, sprinkle it with the delicious fruity olive oil, empty my glass of sour white Capri wine; and remember that Norman Douglas once wrote that whoever has helped us to a larger understanding is entitled to our gratitude for all time."

Her equation for physical and psychological well-being is easy: Eat simply and eat together.

For the average American family, who now spends nearly as much money on fast food as they do on groceries, this simplicity is not so easily achieved. Perhaps the root of this problem is cultural misperception.

In America, it seems snobbish to take time to eat good food with one's family. The Norman Rockwell portrait of the family around the dinner table now seems less middle-class and more haute bourgeois, as many families can't afford to have one parent stay home from work, spending his or her day cleaning and cooking a roast and side of potatoes for the spouse and kids. Most parents don't have time to cook, many don't even know how, and the idea that one should spend extra money and time picking up produce at the supermarket rather than grabbing a bucket of Chinese take-out can seem unfeasible, unnecessary, and slightly pretentious. It's understandable to want to save time and money. It's the same reason that small shops go out of business once Walmart moves into town; but in this case it is not the shop owner who suffers, it is the consumer of unhealthy and rushed meals.

How then do we eat better, not just from a nutritional perspective, but from a psychological one as well?

"To eat is a necessity, but to eat intelligently is an art," said the 17th-century writer François de La Rochefoucauld. What "intelligence" means in the context of eating is debatable. There are those who obsess over their food-where it is sourced, if it is organic, the nebulous desire for culinary "originality"-who are known in the U.S. as "foodies" and in France as generation Le Fooding, both of which are the hipsters of cuisine, moneyed and sometimes picky. But this doesn't seem quite like "intelligence" as de La Rochefoucauld meant it.

Perhaps to "eat intelligently," one needs only to eat together. Although it would be nice to eat healthily as well, even take-out makes for a decent enough meal, psychologically speaking, so long as your family, roommates, or friends are present.

It's incredible what we're willing to make time for if we're motivated. (Although we often end up just a bit too squeezed to make it to the gym in the morning, we can still find time to go to the movies after work.) Perhaps seeing eating together not as another appointment on a busy schedule, but rather as an opportunity to de-stress, a chance to catch up with those whom we love then, could help our children do better in school, get in better shape, and be less likely to abuse drugs and alcohol. Eating together also led children to report better relationships with their parents and surely relationships between adults can similarly benefit.

On our last night before I left home to return to school, my father and I went out to our favorite hometown restaurant, a Sichuan place where we always order the same thing: Yu Xiang Qiezi for me, Black Date Chicken for him. But even after 60 years of life on this planet and countless dinners here, he still could not properly hold a pair of chopsticks. "Let me help," I said, and after a little resistance, he obliged me. "See you have to hold this one perfectly still," I said, motioning to the chopstick in my left hand, "while you move this one to pick up your food." The waiter came with another bowl of rice on which he would try. He nodded. "I think I've got it," he said, delicately holding the chopsticks between his fingers. "The chopsticks each have an individual role, but in order not to drop your food, they have to work together. Right?" I smiled. "Exactly."

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Family dinners build relationships, and help kids do better in school.

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More people eat in their living room than their dining room.

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WXY and Situ lead design of New York outdoor dining prototypes

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WXY Architecture and Situ have collaborated with government agencies to create and test standardised formats for outdoor dining pavilions in New York City.

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designboom | architecture & design magazine

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AI illustrations of food adorn vibrant mosaic plates for dining table installation in hong kong

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o&o studio and rehyphenation collaborate on spatial and cultural installation meet’n meal, taking part in the sai kung hoi arts festival.

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Milan Expo 2015: Nendo has played with the perspective of a dining table and chairs to present a range of tableware inside the Japanese pavilion at the Milan Expo (+ slideshow).

Tokyo-based studio Nendo - led by designer Oki Sato - was responsible for creating one of the gallery spaces inside Japan's Kengo Kuma-designed pavilion.

Following the Expo's theme of Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life, the studio turned the 11- by three-metre space into a dining room.

A long black table runs down the centre of the white-walled room, surrounded by 24 black chairs.

Different sets of tableware designed by Nendo and made by Japanese artisans are laid out on its surface, which is angled from front to back to allow visitors to see the spread from the entrance.

The chairs along either side are extended to match the ascending height of the tabletop, creating an optical illusion when viewed from directly in front.

Designing 400 projects at a time "relaxes me" says Nendo's Oki Sato

"The table and chairs gradually increase in height the further into the room one goes, playing with the spectator's sense of perspective as well as allowing him/her to look over all the items on display from the gallery entrance," said Nendo.

Towards the back of the space, the stretched chairs can be used as stepladders for better views of the products.

"Although resembling an ordinary dinner table, by experimenting with the functional relationship between tables and chairs, the end result is a uniquely conceptual exhibition space that enables the spectator to view all of the products from various angles and distances," Nendo said.

Each of the 16 sets of tableware was designed specifically for the exhibition, which is titled Colourful Shadows. All the pieces are coloured black so the details of their shapes and finishes can be better appreciated, according to the studio.

"In the novelist Junichiro Tanizaki's essay In Praise of Shadows, there is a passage about eating a yokan (a traditional sweet made from black bean paste) in the dark in order to develop a keener palette," said Nendo.

"Just as in this exhibition, all information pertaining to colour has been removed to encourage the spectator to focus on other more essential aspects of the exhibited pieces."

Products on display include a set of minimal cutlery, a collection of intricately carved chopsticks and a range of ceramic cups and bowls with different patterned surfaces.

The installation will remain in place for the duration of the Expo, which opened last month and continues until 31 October 2015. The tableware was also displayed at the Nendo Works 2014-2015 exhibition during Milan's Salone del Mobile furniture fair in April, along with over 100 products created by the prolific design studio over the past year.

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Nendo creates dining room illusion at Japan's Expo pavilion

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Nendo has played with the perspective of a dining table and chairs to presented a range of tableware inside the Japanese pavilion at the Milan Expo

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Feeling Lonely? Share a Meal. - The Family Dinner Project

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Loneliness is an epidemic in America, but research shows that sharing a meal with others can be powerful for lonely people of all ages.

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Pathogenic agents in food, whether they are microbial (such as viruses, bacteria and parasites) or chemical (from toxins and heavy metals to pesticide residues and veterinary drugs) carry risks to human health. Each year, approximately 33 million healthy years are lost due to unsafe food and children aged under 5 carry one-third of this disease burden. These illnesses and deaths are largely preventable. “The burden is upon us to make the most of political opportunities and take food safety to the next level” says Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General.

Following the Seventy-third World Health Assembly resolution on “Strengthening efforts on food safety” (WHA73.5), WHO will regularly monitor the global burden of foodborne diseases and measure the impact of the WHO Global Strategy for Food Safety 2022–2030.

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Dozens of pesticides enter the body through contaminated fruits and vegetables, study finds | CNN

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Eating more pesticide-laced produce increases exposure to dozens of pesticides, according to a nonprofit that publishes the “Dirty Dozen” list of contaminated foods.