Marije Vogelzang calls herself an ‘eating designer’ who helps you build a relationship with food. She is at present working with The Park hotels to redesign their room service concept. She shared her design philosophy with D Kaushik
Say food designing and what will come to mind is the way food is presented. But Marije Vogelzang strongly opposes that. She prefers calling herself an ‘eating designer’ rather than a ‘food designer’ and the reason is that “food is perfectly designed by nature.” You can only work on the eating experience and that is what Marije does. “I like to look at what food does to people, rituals related to it. Its culture and history, how it is produced and transported. Food habits of people, how feelings change when you share food with the loved ones or with the enemies,” she explained. Marije says that designers who work with food mostly change its shape but she looks at the content and the background of food. Her design philosophy is about eight inspirational points. “Food goes to the stomach but it is also attached to our memories and feelings. The eight points include senses, nature, culture, society, technique, psychology, science and action.”
The designer has been to India to participate in design forums and at present she is at The Park hotel in Delhi to collaborate with Chef Rajesh from the hotel and come up with a special design for the dinner to happen today at the hotel. “Everything is a surprise. But I can reveal that it’s a kind of an installation, which takes into account several stories,” she shared. She is also working to change the concept of room service across the chains of the hotel. “If you look at the room service of hotels at every part of the world you would notice that it’s dull. I think it should be fun and while designing for the room service of The Park, I have assumed it to be a park where people should have a picnic. So people will experience a room picnic through the service they will get in the hotel,” she added.
She graduated in 2000 from a design academy in Netherlands. “I am trained to be a product designer. When I graduated, food was not a subject at all. All the designers were making designs for the humans. Human beings are the central point to the designs, products are always about the consumers and how they consume the products. Funny thing is that while everything is made around humans, we ignore the most important aspect of human survival — food. Designers never did anything on it, only presentation was paid attention to. I don’t think only plating is an important aspect in food. When I graduated I thought more people are doing food designing. But there weren’t a lot of people around the world. Now there is a revolution going on in the world of food and design. lots of young designers are coming in, may be, because there are more issues surrounding food in the world now. like people don’t know what they are eating or they do not connect to what they are eating,” she said.
About the basics of her designs, she informed that she takes inspiration from daily lives and begins with stories. “When you know what story you want to tell or what experience you want to design, half the job is done. lot of my inspiration comes from psychological research. Human psychology is an important part of food designing,” she said.
Marije is mighty impressed by the Indian food culture. “It’s such a comprehensive culture that I can’t say that I know it. I appreciate, respect and like it. Food culture in India is rich. I think we in the West are poor when it comes to food culture and daily lives we lead. We lack appreciation of food and rituals around it. I like the street food culture in India. Take for example, a chai wallah tossing the tumblers in air like a magician. I think these things give your daily lives more value. I also like the way people eat with hands. I think in the West we lack a certain sense since we do not eat with hands,” she said and looks forward to come to India for a holiday soon.