Eating a meal with friends and families has always been an opportunity to share ideas. Food is grown, harvested, prepared, and served all for this social gathering to exist; a point in ones day where the biological needs of ones survival can be temporarily set aside and a celebration of life can occur. Bigger questions can be posed, connections can be made, networks expanded.
In order for any network to grow, biological needs must first be met. Babies learn how to express these needs for food and sleep and it is clearly seen. Yet what drives humanity are the needs that surface after survival has become a sure thing. What are these needs? These are what are discussed around the dinner table.
woah, that is quite an image. What is dinner like at your house? Do you always have intense conversations? Where is design’s place in this – or said differently, how can the setting have an impact on the conversation. Your image is definitely spatial, with spatial cues – pointers directing attention – and from that one vantage point, we have views into at least 4 different zones.
Food can be a powerful theme, and could be amplified at the Open Source Learning Academy with interests in farm-to-table movements etc. And yet, what is interesting about the dinner table you describe, is that once everything is set, the meal is prepared, it is the atmosphere and conversation you are after. You will need to begin to dig a little deeper now, and begin to identify the different settings you want to develop and what imagined conversations might take place there.
Unless I’m with a group of friends, the dinners are pretty mundane but the potential is always there ….like the modern day fire/hearth or watering hole where people gather to exchange stories. I think the quality of food and the atmosphere of the restaurant have a lot to do with the comfort levels of people and thus the free sharing of information. I’ve worked in a couple of basque/ spanish influenced restaurants where the plates are meant to be shared and the formula of app-entree-desert is out the door but there is a different buzz in the room because of this. The restaurant culture led to a certain social culture. That said, a person full with good food and drink is more likely to going to ask those questions where the answers are beyond biological needs
Big fan of Tapas here! But i think the social structure of the meal with Tapas – intense flavors that can be shared – works well in regards to food and OSL. And there is also an aspect of intimacy perhaps too- our favorite place nt in NYC is a little Tapas restaurant called Tia Pol’s. There are maybe 10 tables, and the space itself is at most 12 feet wide!