clocks, cocaine and milk

a moment in time does not have to be special, it already is, is its nature.

Buddhism teaches how to live in the present, “mindfully”; it seems such an easy concept, but apparently the human being needs someone else, someone wiser, to appreciate the breeze of the wind or the beauty of a landscape without having any other thoughts in his mind. The human brain is designed to retain memories and, if asked to focus on a particular one, it can remember details more than what we expected. A frozen moment in the past can become as vivid as the present one.

Perceiving time is an innate faculty, but the way we naturally do that does not depend on stop watches and calendars, each of us has an individual and specific way of understanding the passage of moments and everything on earth bases itself on a different timing. The way all this elements come together brings to our perception of a moment. A meteorite has travelled for millennia before entering the atmosphere and we are the result of an evolution process that has started with the first algae on earth; when looking at a falling star we do not focus on all the causality that has brought to that event. Every moment depends on a series of accidental facts and works on a series of different levels, from molecules to planets scattered in the galaxy. One of Leibniz (a German philosopher of the XVII Century) most famous theory was the one for which we live in the “best of all the possible worlds”; how many “what if” are in every single moment? How many future changes can a single event cause?

Maybe is the appreciation of this randomness the key to understand Buddha’s lesson; there is a scientific reason for every event, from falling in love to spot a shooting star but we have an active role in deciding whether or not to make this events influence our lives. I have tried to draw a graph that could have explain some of the many different levels of causality that brought to a personal experience of mine: a night with a person that I love where time froze and stars were falling over the sea that proudly and calmly was laid in front of us.

As previously mentioned, the human being thinks to past and future more than how he actually focuses on present; that is not entirely true when coming to environmental issues: from the last generations (from the advent of the industrial society and particularly in the last 6 decades) we inherit a great deal of problems related to Mother Earth. Since the modern society imposed its linear thinking over the cyclic natural one, wastes have been produced; the concept of “waste” is merely anthropogenic, there is no such thing in a system based on cycles. Nature is an accurately engineered machine in which every bit is used and flora and fauna benefit one from the other; no loops are left open and there is a place for everything. In his book “cradle to cradle”, William McDonough suggests to make our waste system alike that of a tree: by applying nature cycles to human consumption we could turn the linear thinking of using and throwing “away” into a zero waste, natural and sustainable way of living and conceiving the effects that we cause on the planet.

The way we perceive “food” has deeply been changed in the last Century, both on how we get food and how we consume it. We stepped up from our level on the trophic pyramid and our diet has become strongly based on protein and meat, more than what we truly need. To satisfy the ever growing demand of food of the ever growing society, food production has been moved from farms to laboratories: processed, sanitized and shipped throughout the world, genetically modified to not be anymore subject to seasons or weather, ****, the food the last generations have been eating is definitely different from the one that was consumed until the beginning of the last Century. Adding so many passages to a product takes energies and that is way 20% of world’s oil use is spent to make food. Movements have been formed against the growing new food industry from the 1970’s, in particular the eco-survivalist of the permaculture and the rediscovery of the pleasure of food of “slow food”; both based on monoculture and the re-localization of regional productions are opposite to the fast foods’ ideals that focus mainly on the design of the product rather than on the product itself.

The strength points of fast food companies are affordability of prices and the addiction caused by the huge amount of sugars added: on www.changingdiabetesbarometer.com can be seen how the percentage of diabetic population has been consistently increasing in the last decade and the forecasts show that is a problem that won’t be solved quite easily. It won’t be completely foolish to say that sugar is our Century’s drug; for this reason when asked to produce a table setting that would have make people think I decided to make “lines” of sugar treating it in the same way as cocaine. Mints were part of the scene as well in the role of ecstasy pills. 

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In one of Melbourne most central streets, Bourke Street, at the ground level of a building there is a 25 square metres empty room that is waiting to be given a new destination after having being a cafe. We have been asked to repurpose that space turning it into a shop that would sell food of our choice; the food has to be related somehow to the topics that we have been discussing in the previous weeks, “food for thought”, as it has been called. Firstly I wanted to design a frozen yogurt shop, an healthy product that doesn’t need much preparation so that the kitchen wouldn’t have massively compromised the tiny room. Frozen yogurt’s toppings are mainly fruits and that brought me to design a vertical green house that I could have installed on the glazed windows on one of the walls; the customers who have a membership will have got a berries plant from which to pick their garnishment and, more important, could have chosen to adopt a cow with a donation. To decrease the number of wastes the frozen yogurt would have been sold in eatable cones or the customers could have bought their own container. It would have been called “mmm...ilk”.

I started to get documented about ingredients and preparation of the frozen yogurt and found out that is not as “healthy” and “unprocessed” as I thought it was and, as simplicity and natural taste were two were the main aims I wanted to achieve, decided to go back to the origins and sell pure, simple milk. Most of the people never tasted a glass of real milk, in the same way as drawn from a cow, and in a class of a French kindergarten most of the children, when asked to colour a cow painted it in lilac resembling the “Milka chocolate” one as they never saw a real one. What I have tried to achieve in my design is to make customers aware of issues such as the conditions of cows in the modern stalls, wastes and seasonal fruits in a way that they would have enjoyed. The escamotage of the adoptions would have both been used on a merely material level to aid the shop finances its cows (hosted in a farm close to the city to which tours are organized so that the cows’ patrons could have met their beloved animal) and most of all to establish a strong relationship from man and cow, final consumer and initial producer, city and countryside. By knowing the cow with bulletins on her health status and pictures hanged on the shop’s walls as family portraits, the customers would be sure of the complete traceability of the product they are consuming.

 To accentuate the blending of the border between city and countryside, the shop is furnished as an extravagant living room that could resemble that of a grandmother: wallpaper and frames on the walls, warm white oak (mounted on a floating flooring system) to absorb the noises, comfortable couch and armchair and a large, red maple wood table. I wanted the table to be the main element of the shop: in the same way as in a house all the activities are centred around it so at mmm... ilk customers are served and can order, eat and stay, all in the same place; it connects the “dining room” open to the clientele to the kitchen (that can be seen from the customers). Instead of chairs I have decided to have a bench in front of the common table so that people are more likely to start a conversation or just enjoy the pleasure of their meal with someone else; the overall atmosphere of the shop becomes more friendly, informal and “familiar”. The products sold are healthy and simple, not much preparation is required; they are just four: milk, milkshakes made with seasonal fruits (a chart of the fruits of the month is hanged on the wall), ricotta cheese garnished with honey or cocoa or lemon and a condensed milk and honey lollipop with a colour pencil instead of a stick (once again to avoid wastes and to augment customers’ loyalty to the shop as the whole set of 10 colours can be collected). The milk is poured in the glass directly from the industrial milk container hanged in the kitchen and visible from the area open to the clientele. Customers are welcome to stay to read a book (that can be picked from the shop’s bookshelf), navigate on internet, chat or just enjoy their purchase. What I was really keen to do is to bring back the charm of a time lost in time, to give the possibility to escape from the noises of the city in a peaceful and homey cosy space and to put people together in a aware but yet playful way. The overall atmosphere is at the same time nostalgic and innovative, the perfect place where to enjoy a glass of mmm... ilk!