Already well known to Parisians, Buren’s works are site-specific and his parameters of ‘creating’ are derived from analyses of existing site and context. A fine example of this is Buren’s controversial Les Deux Plateaux, installed in the courtyard of the Palais Royal in 1983. The immense controversy and divided reception over this piece certainly raised Buren’s profile on the world stage. With In Situ, Buren has used the geometry and layout of the Palais’ nave and dome, among other contextual influences, to rationalise the layout of a series of coloured plastic canopies stretched over steel frames.

“Because of its size, its beauty and history, [the Grand Palais] is one of the most difficult places for an exhibition,” Buren said on commencing the Monumenta installation. Despite his apprehensions, In Situ is relatively playful. The frivolous orange, blue, green and yellow tensile plastic canopies are contrasted with the restrained and gridded black and white canopy frames. The canopies are all roughly set at the typical ceiling height of a Parisian apartment, creating an intimate space for visitors as they move through the nave and below the grandeur of its glazed vaulted roofs. The central dome itself has received some blue coloured plastic. Despite the extent and number, the canopies recede within the majesty of the nave.

As the intensity of the sun changes in the Paris sky above, so does the coloured light cast onto the floor below. When the sky dulls, the canopies become reflective, visitors animating the space below canopies with their own movement. Barely audible sounds permeate from the fringes of the nave, and at night roving spotlights turn the installation into something of a disco.

Visitors can pause at the cafe for a psychedelic lunch or refreshment break. The rear mezzanine provides an elevated spot from which the entire extent of the installation can be perceived and all of the coloured canopies are visible. Centrally located mirrored podiums reflect a view of the coloured dome and sky, above.

Last year’s Monumenta Leviathan installation by Anish Kapoor certainly made an impact, and provided subsequent Monumenta artists with a very hard act to follow. Kapoor’s gigantic pneumatic balloon sat proudly within the Grand Palais nave, a truly monumental piece. In Situ certainly respects the grandeur of the space, and is subordinate to the ‘size, beauty and history‘ of the nave.

The installation is a delight to visit, though one can’t help but wonder whether Buren’s parameters for design and creating could have been slightly relaxed, and if the installation might benefit from being more interactive.

Pre-purchasing tickets ahead of time online can save time if you are unable to get there during the week, but get there quickly as In Situ runs until the 21st of June.

As Untapped wrote last year, the Grand Palais plays host to the annual La Nuit Electro, last October’s edition was a stunner headlined by SBTRKT, Modeselektor, Crystal Fighters and Cassius among other electronic music greats. Details of the 2012 edition have not yet been announced, but keep an eye on the SFR La Nuit Electro site.

How to get there:

Avenue Winston-Churchill, 75008 Paris [Map]
Metro: Champs-Elysées Clémenceau or Franklin D Roosevelt
Website: http://www.monumenta.com/en

Get in touch with the author @twarbrick.

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Albert Kahn was a French banker and philanthropist who happened to be a millionaire. The story behind this magnificent place is quite simple yet so intriguing. He acquired the gardens in Boulogne-Billancourt in in the late 1800’s, and it was a meeting place until he went bankrupt. The park was then made public. It has always been known for its rose gardens, Japanese gardens, English gardens and conifer wood.

As he was a big traveler and loved photography, the modern gardens are now considered a national museum and house many of his photographs. He is well known for his daring color photography from various regions across the globe. His fortuned turned to dust after the Wall Street crash, but his vivid color photography never lost value.

What used to be his estate, the gardens of Albert Kahn, are some of the most colorful corners of the Paris region. You can wander and feel like you’re in a wonderland of freshness with the flowers blooming left and right. It’s one of those places that is almost “left out”, as it is outside Paris’s borders, but I feel like it’s a magical treasure that everyone should take a minute to discover.

The gardens are open from Tuesday to Sunday from 11am to 6pm in the winter months and from 11am to 7pm in the summer months. The cost to enter the museum and gardens is 3 euros, or 1,5 euros for children, seniors or students.
Entrance is located at the terminus of line 10, Boulogne – Pont de Saint Cloud. [Map]

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On May Day – perhaps the only sunny day of the last few weeks, Parisian cool kids turned out in force for the first birthday celebration of Café A, the restaurant and bar housed within the old Couvent des Récollets, on rue du Faubourg Saint Martin. Complete with outdoor bar, hammocks, picnic tables and (silent) DJ sets, the café’s courtyard provided the perfect spot for sun-drenched imbibing and people watching.

Established in 2003, the old convent is home to 3 organisations:

• The Regional Council of Architects of the Île de France region
• Le centre international d’accueil et d’échange des récollets, which provides accommodation for visiting artists and researchers from around the world
• Maison de l’Architecture en Île de France, an organisation promoting architectural practise and training and interdisciplinary interaction within the construction industry and the arts for the Île de France region. Café A caters for conferences, expositions and soirées hosted by the organisation, as well as private functions and a number of regular evenings run by a collective of Parisian DJs from the Le Mellotron & What the Funk Paris stables, as well as live swing, jazz, soul & funk gigs.

The convent was endorsed in 1603 by Marie de Medici and Henri IV for an order of Franciscan friars, and is of an austere architectural style typical to French religious buildings of the 17th & 18th centuries. The convent was confiscated during the Revolution in 1789 and housed soldiers of the National Guard, after which it became a spinning mill and subsequently a hospice for incurables in 1802 – around which time the street elevation of the chapel received a neo-classical remodel.

In 1861 it became the Military Hospital of Saint Martin, and due to its proximity to the Gare du Nord and the Gare de l’Est saw a lot of action during both World Wars and France’s war in Algeria, it closed after the latter in 1968. The building then became a canvas for a collective of art squatters known as the Anges des Récollects, whom were even licensed by the state to live and work here.

Located just beside the Gare de l’Est in the 10^th arrondissement – we are in a ‘bobo’ neighbourhood that is still rough-around-the-edges enough to be subversively trendy, a key trait for the trending venues of la rive droite (cases in point: Le 104, Le Comptoir Generale, La Bellvilloise), and just a 2 minute walk from the Canal Saint Martin (and my apartment, bonus!).

The 2003 renovations by architects Karine Chartier & Thomas Corbasson is almost an anti-development, whereby existing original walls, staircases and murals are retained and celebrated, and volumes and spaces returned to original proportions  and integrity. A design approach that respects the many lives of the building and the protected heritage elements within.

Parisian explorer and writer Adam Roberts gives a poetic description of the various traces & murals he encounters in his visit back in 2009.

The stripped and tactile double-height walls of the main Café space are broken down by a partial mezzanine floor, which creates a cosy spatial antithesis to the double height volumes and walled courtyard outside. This serves as the perfect spot for an intimate apéro or tranquil working space. During the day there is always at least one creative-looking type poring over a a laptop or iPad, and DJ decks are  often installed under the mezzanine for an evening boogie.

Admittedly I have yet to dine at Café A, but after several daytime and evening visits, I can confirm sightings of many happy and satisfied diners tucking into well-presented dishes with decent sized portions and great looking produce.

The chapel’s original timber barrel-vault roof and bunker-like walls provide a moody setting with great acoustics for seminars and live music / DJ sessions.

Due to daytime neighbourhood noise restrictions, music during the day is provided by two DJs on separate silent disco channels. Whilst most folk seemed to prefer the low level music emanating from the café interior and conversation with friends, others were happy to dance with headphones in smaller groups. I’m not sure which channel he was following, but one member of staff was having a fantastic time working his way between the kitchen and courtyard tables. Mid-evening the celebrations and DJs moved inside from the courtyard, where dancing continued without head phones.

Wishing Café A many happy returns on your birthday, may you continue to bring fun and music to our neighbourhood for many years to come!

How to get there:

148 rue due Faubourg Saint Martin [Map]

Metro: Gare de l’Est

Website http://www.maisonarchitecture-idf.org/

Facebook http://www.facebook.com/cafea10

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The Cali Classic from Cantine California, one of Paris’ new food trucks

Food trucks have become all the rage now with Parisians finally discovering the joys of gourmet food outside of the confines of high end bistros and Michelin starred restaurants. The first truck, Le Camion Qui Fume (which translates to the “Truck Who Smokes”), opened in November 2011 serving up gourmet burgers to immediate and unparalleled success. The second, Cantine California, hit the streets at the end of March 2012 offering up some of my favorite standbys: tacos, burgers, brunch, and cupcakes. Besides a different menu, Cantine California also uses organic quality ingredients. Both have regular spots they park at and long waiting times – often an hour or so – proof that Parisians are shedding their image as haute cuisine snobs and enthusiastically embracing the casualness of street food.

Le Camion Qui Fume launched in November 2011

The food truck concept, however, is not entirely new to France. In the suburbs of Paris and other parts of the country, many grew up with “les camions” which sold pizza. (Think of the Mister Softee trucks in the US.) Though the food was often solid, no one ever thought to put a gourmet spin on the idea until now. Both chefs for Le Camion Qui Fume and Cantine California trained at the prestigious Ferrandi cooking school in Paris and both trucks are headed by Americans, where gourmet street food is part of the culinary fabric.

Burgers are offered by both Cantine California and Le Camion Qui Fume

It’s only in France where the trend towards casual, less stuffy dining has been a slow and steady evolution that started roughly twelve years ago. That’s when Le Fooding was born. Le Fooding, a term coined by its founders to join “food” and “feeling” is mostly known for its restaurant guide and food festivals, but eventually grew into a cultural movement. (Similar to Slow Food and other trends that have changed our approach to eating.) Le Fooding challenged the traditionally conservative French food culture with its youthful enthusiasm, throwing mass picnics with three star Michelin chefs. This break from what used to define France – the temple of high end dining – has now created a more open and casual yet serious approach to food. Perfect timing for the food trucks.

The future of food trucks in Paris still remains a question. Due to the city receiving hundreds of applications after the success of Le Camion Qui Fume, they are still determining how to regulate the types of cuisine they will allow as well as the number of trucks they want to flood Paris’ streets. Either way, I know where I can get a good burger now.

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I expected to see a handful of other architects or architecture students wandering about in silent pilgrimage. However in addition, I found a large group of local school children running around filming segments about the villa and its design. This lightened the otherwise monastic atmosphere, and I hoped to animate my own photos by capturing a few of these kids – but being polite little French people, they would wait patiently outside of frame until I was done.

Visitors are free to roam the site and view the exterior of the villa & mini-me gardener’s cottage adjacent to the front gate. Most visitors seem to unconsciously follow the intended path of an approaching car, taking the right hand driveway that loops around the raised building and to the main entrance, centered on the rear curved glass facade, which was designed to accommodate the turning circle of the Savoye family’s large sedan. The green of the ground floor walls and discrete garage doors seek to camouflage the villa with the site. Together with the raised mass, the green walls and glass disturb the surrounding landscape as little as possible.

The ticketing desk and gift shop are crammed into the ground floor Entrance Hall, but once this patch of clutter (that would have Le Corbusier turning in his grave) is navigated, visitors encounter the built-in table and wash hand basin – the architect’s dictation to client and visitors to the villa of the correct process and rituals of entrance.

The visitors’ pamphlet gives an architectural walk with the recommended sequencing given by Le Corbusier himself. Not known for modesty in the conviction of his own design prowess, it was due to his direct petitioning (supported by other architects internationally) to the government that the villa was declared a national monument and saved from demolition at the hands of the town of Poissy in 1963.

The ground floor service areas and servants rooms are well lit naturally by large windows that afford great views across the site but also little privacy for occupants.

Visitors initially snub the curving stair in favour of ramp for access the first floor, which provides an iconic ‘architectural promenade’ – a leisurely and theatrical entrance to the first floor, with views to the ‘hanging garden’ roof terrace and open plan living room. Le Corbusier would have been chuffed to see the filming school children embracing the theatre of the ramp, sliding and sashaying up and down.

A full-height sliding glass wall links the living room to roof terrace. This area provided the perfect backdrop for another group from the school, who had decided to opt for a more loungey-interview style in their film. Le Corbusier had collaborated with Charlotte Perriand on the interiors and furniture design for the villa, and their lasting influence is evident in the copy-cat living rooms and rolling furniture production that allow the Villa Savoye aesthetic to be replicated in many new homes today.

In the kitchen another group of students were filming each other striding up and down the galley-like pantry, with its kitsch tiled surfaces, bench tops and built-in cabinetry. The effect of the continuous white finishes and tiled bench tops throughout the kitchen is fresh but stark, the lack of appliances and equipment accentuating this.

An ensuite bathroom is shared by the guest and son’s bedrooms, and is the only fully partitioned bathroom to allow privacy. The highlight of the master suite is the iconic sculptural tiled daybed at the bath area which defines the edge between bathroom and bedroom in the open plan space. The villa and its interiors remain so incredibly current that it is difficult to reconcile the dated sanitary fixtures with the spaces in which they sit, the enamelled claw-footed bath being the best example of this.

Both ramp and curving staircase continue to the second level, where the top-level solarium is protected by curving sculptural wind break and wall with punched window, offering a focussed view over the Seine valley. This area is free of the younger students, but is where all archi-tourists like myself have settled at end of our visit, and where we all survey the (in)famous (once leaking) roofs. Roofs and skylights have been subject to refurbishment following the Savoyes’ complaints of incessant leaking and accompanying noise during stormy weather, and no doubt further work was undertaken to this end during the 1963 & 1985-1997 renovation programmes. Pragmatic eyes will appraise the network of drains and flashings at roof level as well as the overflow spouts that appear on external facades – the intrusion of the spouts on the purity of the white facades definitely appear as post-completion solutions.

Referring to the visitor leaflet one last time, I see that our group sitting at the solarium roof terrace have not ended as directed by Le Corbusier’s guide. He may not have been happy with our straying from his architectural walk, but surely this would be of little concern if he was to consider the multitude of international admirers that continue to visit Poissy to admire an 81-year-old house that throughout the decades has remained heavily influential to designers around the world.

How to get there:

82 rue de Villiers, Poissy.

RER Station Poissy, line A towards Poissy, and from the station take the number 50 bus towards la Coudraie alighting at stop ‘Villa Savoye’

Website http://villa-savoye.monuments-nationaux.fr/en/

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Readers of Untapped Cities have come to know us by our annual coverage of the always fabulous and ever exclusive flash mob Dîner en Blanc (White Dinner) in Paris. In 2010, we descended onto the Louvre museum stretching from the I.M. Pei Pyramid to the Tuileries gardens. Last year, we filled the Cour Carrée du Louvre with 8,000 attendees in white, while a second official flash dinner took place at Notre Dame cathedral.

Although I cannot divulge any specific information about the 2012 Paris Dîner en Blanc, I can safely tell you you that it will be the grandest yet. With prior locations at the Invalides, Arc de Triomphe, Pantheon, Eiffel Tower and Madeleine (here’s a look back), it’s hard to imagine that the dinner could outdo itself–but that’s my prediction. Untapped will be covering the Paris dinner again this year.

In 1988, the first official Dîner en Blanc took place in the Parc de Bagatelle in the Bois de Boulogne upon Francois Pasquier’s return to Paris after some years abroad. He planned a dinner party to reconnect with friends but so many wanted to come that he asked them to convene at the Bois de Boulogne and to dress in white so they could find each other.  Not surprisingly, it became a yearly affair. Until 1991, the venue remained the same but the numbers quickly escalated from 200 initially to 400, to 800 in 1990 and 1,200 in 1991. By 1992, it was necessary to conceal the location of the dinner and the current method of using point-people to coordinate batches of tables and provide transportation to the event began.

The first New York City Dîner en Blanc

Over the past few years, the Dîner en Blanc has become a worldwide phenomenon due to the efforts of Aymeric Pasquier, Francois’s son, who spread the dinners first to Montreal and Quebec, and then formed Le Dîner en Blanc^® to expand to other cities. Last year, Untapped attended the first New York City Dîner en Blanc. This year, the official dinner will arrive to San Francisco, San Diego, Las Vegas, Toronto, Barcelona, Philadelphia and Singapore, and they’re looking for a group to spearhead the first official Chicago dinner. Although the Paris Dîner en Blanc remains via personal invitation, the other cities have a more “democratic” system using online signups. In years after, those that attend the dinners are invited back and can recommend friends to join them the year after, a pyramid amicale or “friendly pyramid,” the founders call it.

This rapid expansion has not occurred without controversy, however. When news of the first New York City Dîner en Blanc hit The New York Times, enterprising organizers in other American cities scrambled to create their own version.

Last year, a trademark dispute arose between the official Le Dîner en Blanc organization and groups in Chicago and San Francisco. The name “Le Dîner en Blanc” is trademarked by by Aymeric Pasquier in the United States, France and Canada. In San Francisco, the organizers changed the name to “Le Diner à San Francisco,” but Pasquier contends that the organization deliberately plays on confusion with the public as regards to the origin and affiliation of the event. San Francisco will also have an official Dîner en Blanc this year.

As we reported last year, a local group in Chicago claimed they had opposed the trademark filing but it does not appear to have gone through (based on the US Trademark website). The group in Chicago went ahead to host the dinner last year without changing the name, with Pasquier hoping they would come to an agreement for 2012. According to Pasquier, this has fallen through so there is an open call to host an official Le Dîner en Blanc in Chicago.

In New York, the limit of technology presented itself when 30,000 logged in to sign up for just 1,000 spots, leading to outrage by characteristically feisty New Yorkers, further compounded when politically correct America met not-so-PC France. While the Dîner en Blanc in Paris is noted for the attendees’ strict adherence to decorum and rules (imagine 14,000 people leaving not a spec of litter behind. If you’re in disbelief, I will take photographs of the empty Paris locations this year), New Yorkers are hardwired to break rules. They wanted (rightly) to attend as same-sex couples, they got creative with tables (a painting canvas atop a laundry rack), they brought sparklers (illegal in NYC), they danced on chairs, they wore ballet tutus, one girl took off her top (but was quickly lambasted by those around for being particularly unattractive and flat-chested–her group left early).

I was left with mixed feelings of course. New York is, in my heavily biased opinion, one of the best cities in the world because it’s brash and chaotic; there’s a nuance to the rules, a tacit understanding that to live here requires acceptance of contradiction and of disparity, of simultaneous hi-brow and lo-brow existence, and everything in between. It is a place where we know anything can happen. The New York City dinner was uniquely New York, at least the New York of the Bloomberg era–distinctly corporate in a public space that is in fact, private (the World Financial Center), but the event was still able to retain the elements of spontaneity and quirkiness without which New York City would die a slow, generic death.

But this, in the end is the magic of the Dîner en Blanc. In each city, it takes on the particular flavor of what defines that urban setting physically and in spirit. Using a franchise model, the international Dîner en Blanc organization prefers and solicits ground-up and local execution of the  event.

In any industry there will be the trailblazers and then the enterprising that copy and modify, and Americans know this dialectic all too well. Will people know the difference between the real Dîner en Blanc and the alternatives? Maybe, maybe not. As for me, I’m holding on to the spirit of the original Paris Dîner en Blanc–it’s hard to go against an event created purely out of a desire for comraderie.

To start your own official Dîner en Blanc in any city, contact the organization through their website. They’re still looking for someone to head up Chicago this year so get on it!

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It is located away from Paris’ crowded city center near the Place de la Nation. From the street, all one is able to see of 35, Rue de Picpus is nondescript wall and wooden door.

Behind the door lies a small complex of buildings and a chapel.

To the right of the chapel is a blue gate next to which are two plaques commemorating General Pershing’s visit to the cemetery in 1917.

On the other side of the gate lies a small wooded and landscaped area.

To the right of this natural oasis, behind an ivy covered wall, lies the cemetery itself.

In the far right corner the Marquis de Lafayette is buried. His grave is watched over by an American Flag, which the Nazis allegedly didn’t remove, and numerous plaques and medals. He was buried with dirt from Bunker Hill as per his request. Lafayette was buried in this cemetery because some of his wife’s relatives were killed during the revolution (a prerequisite to being buried in the cemetery is is having a family member who was guillotined during the summer of 1794).

Past Lafayette’s grave, behind another blue gate, lie the common graves from the Revolution.

On April 12-13, 2012, the Palais de Tokyo (re)opened to the public with a 30-hour, around-the-clock event that featured exhibitions, installations, performances and concerts by 50 artists. After ten months of renovation led by architects Anne Lacaton and Jean- Philippe Vassal, the Palais de Tokyo now occupies its entire 22,000 m² building (approx. 236,800 sq. ft), making it Europe’s largest contemporary art center.

The lines to enter the (re)opening on both nights were intimidating. But nobody, including myself, minded the wait – the extra twenty minutes on the Avenue Président Wilson offered a chance to view the striking “Seven Windows” installation by Swiss-American artist Christian Marclay on the seven windows of Tokyo Eat Restaurant. If this was the prelude to what was inside the Palais, there was every reason to be patient (and excited).

View of Christian Marclay’s “Seven Windows” installation from inside Tokyo Eat Restaurant.

If anyone ever wondered what a €22 million renovation looks like, the Palais de Tokyo makeover will change all perceptions. The massive space resembles a modern, industrial wasteland – raw, exposed, unpainted, dusty and most of all non-directional. It may seem that the center was not quite ready for its big reveal, until of course you quickly figure out that the unfinished look is, as emphasized by the center’s President Jean de Loisy, deadly intentional.

“FEAR EATS THE SOUL” on the walls.

The Palais de Tokyo champions creative artistic expression above all else and will focus particularly on bringing emerging and established French artists to the international art scene. Wherever artists choose to express themselves – on the walls, windows, stairs or ceiling – there will be a place for them within the many diverse gallery spaces at the center.

Indeed, the lack of directional signage invites the visitor to freely explore the expansive four floors of the maze-like building. The visit becomes both an artistic and architectural journey of discovery – from the light-filled upper galleries to the darker, more intimate areas of the lower galleries and cinema rooms.

The exposed beams criss-cross the downstairs galleries.

A recently renovated cinema room within the downstairs galleries.

Some of the highlights of the (re)opening installations included the suspended “The Blind Leading the Blind” sculpture by Belgium artist Peter Buggenhout, the skateboard ramp inspired “Death of a King” by German artist Ulla von Bradenburg, and the celestial “La Grotte Stellaire” by French artist Julien Salaud in one of the cinema rooms. As well, a new series of Modules – Fondation Pierre Bergé – Yves Saint Laurent will be inaugurated and is currently featuring five emerging artists – Cécile Beau, Sarah Fauguet & David Cousinard, Zdenek Kosek, Benoît Pype and Maxime Rossi – who are all exhibiting at a major institution for the first time. I particularly enjoyed the miniature installations of Benoît Pype’s “Fabrique du résiduel,” which looked like tiny pieces of colorful poussière (dust) carefully mounted on wooden blocks:

The miniature wooden blocks of Benoît Pype’s “Fabrique du résiduel.”

My friend Linh Lê commented that Cécile Beau’s “Subfaciem” looked like an air tree growing from the middle, with symmetrical branches and roots on both ends. The Modules will ambitiously aim to showcase 25 emerging artists each year, and the first five artists are spectacular.

Cécile Beau’s “Subfaciem” – up or down?

After leaving the (re)opening event, I was left to ponder the words “Fear eats our souls” that appeared spray painted in larger-than-life size over several walls in the Palais de Tokyo. Clearly there was very little fear involved in (re)opening a super-sized contemporary art center in all its magnificently unfinished and dusty splendor. And that even within a gargantuan contemporary art center, you can still find your own nook and cranny space to enjoy a moment without being jostled by a crowd of spectators. In this case, size does really matter.

The Palais de Tokyo will officially open to the public on April 20, 2012 with the launch of La Triennale, a contemporary art exhibition entitled “Intense Proximité,” curated by Okwui Enwezor, which will investigate what it means to be active as an artist today within the context of a globalized and diverse French art scene. The exhibition program continues in September 2012 with a season based on the concept of “Détours de l’imaginaire” (Detours of the imaginary), the title of the first thematic exhibition conceived by Palais de Tokyo curator Julien Fronsacq.

Le Palais de Tokyo [map]
13 Avenue Président Wilson
75116 Paris
Metro: Iéna
www.palaisdetokyo.com

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Chefs and designers are a natural pairing here in France, where I recently moved. I was drawn to how food and design were so intrinsically linked and after years of working in both fields, often simultaneously, France made sense to me. I loved how in a country so celebrated for its cuisine, food was another vehicle for artistic and visual expression. Thought goes into not only the presentation, but the experience of eating as a whole.

Take for example the Paris des Chefs conference in January which paired internationally renowned chefs with a designer or artist. Over three days, the showcase explored the bridges between “the art of cooking and the different fields of creation.” Bertrand Grébaut of the much hyped restaurant Septime (a graphic design student turned chef) discussed the influence of design on his work with his creative director, the designer and video director Thomas Jumin. Or one of my favorite sessions where the Spanish chef Josean Alija used the individual and dried leaves of leeks to create something similar to papyrus. The result was an edible page that could be decorated and painted on.

Such explorations are well appreciated in France, even in its educational system. The École Supérieure d’Art et de Design de Reims has a nearly ten year old program devoted to food design which “questions eating habits” and focuses on food’s relationship to society.

The program’s founder, Marc Bretillot, along with collaborators Jean-Charles Amey and Earlwyn Covington also created the recently launched multimedia platform called Thinking Food Design. Through invitations sent out to chefs, designers, and anyone interested in the topic, participants document their definitions in two minute videos that answer the simple question: “What is Food Design?” Videos are grouped by categories such as “emotion,” “performance,” or “innovation.”