"Eating design" is not a phrase we toss around here on Co.Design regularly. Designing dining environments, yes. Designing food preparation accessories, yes. But Dutch eating designer Marije Vogelzang would argue those all fall within her preferred field of expertise, as they examine the curious interaction between our hands, our mouths, and our stomachs. Vogelzang’s projects combine the taste of strange (or familiar) ingredients, the camaraderie of the dinner table, and the showmanship of the culinary arts. In essence, she gets people to play with their food. Vogelzang’s work has included projects as diverse as creating installations that explore the role of lettuce in culture, to making gun lollipops to show sugar’s effect on your body, to catering special dinners with utensils ranging from spatulas to forceps. As the proprietor of the Amsterdam cafe Proef, Vogelzang serves local meats alongside organic produce much like her fellow restauranteurs, but has a knack for preparing and presenting food that’s anything but traditional.

Call her an artist, call her a designer—just don’t call her a chef. Vogelzang’s work isn’t designing food, after all, it’s designing the experience around it. In a way, it’s the opposite of the fussy, over-processed molecular gastronomy movement that’s sweeping culinary culture. Vogelzang’s eating design is far more elemental, more engaging, and more entertaining. Here’s a sampling of some of her projects, see more at her website. Never miss a story. I'd also like to receive special Fast Company offers“Zelf vind ik het wel leuk om langs de lopende band te zitten er is zoveel keuze aan sushi.” “In Japan is dit concept beter bekend als 'kaiten-zushi' en is het eigenlijk niet veel beter dan de all-you-can-eat zaken.” “Ik houd van sushi je kunt me voor weinig midden in de nacht wakker maken maar voor sushi mag je bellen!”I remember flying out of Heathrow in the mid-2000s. It was an afternoon flight to Canada and the security screening area was empty of passengers — a pleasant surprise.

However, placing my carry-on bag on to the conveyor belt, I ripped my thumbnail backwards, breaking off a wide swath of the top, and I was suddenly in that magical state of being where I could either, a) chew off the broken part of the thumbnail, most likely ripping out a chunk of the nail in the corner and so causing immense bleeding painsushi conveyor belt vestal, stinging and disfigurement that could possibly continue for weeks or, b) be an adult, wait just a little bit longer and perhaps locate some form of device for safely removing the offending piece of thumbnail. sushezi sushi maker ebayThis was a very tough call — sort of like a Marshmallow Test of delayed gratification. jiro dreams of sushi prevod

As we all know, nature has programmed human beings to always choose option A, even though it’s by far the stupider choice. So, what did I do? I tried to be an adult, and then . . . I had a brainwave. After my bag had gone through the scanner and I was standing shoeless on the floor’s rubber padding (a place the security staff dub “the mushroom patch”), I said to the gentleman on the other side of the conveyor belt: “This is a weird request but here’s the thing: I just ripped off a chunk of my thumbnail but it’s still attached to the thumbjiro dreams of sushi des moines, and I know if I remove it with my teeth it will turn into an unholy bloody painful mess. jiro dreams of sushi chomikWould you happen to have — and I don’t want to compromise security or anything — something I might use to cut off the nail with?”jiro dreams of sushi legenda portugues

The screener looked at me, gave a gentle smile and then motioned for me to join him on the other side of the security area. Once we were there, he walked over to a Wedgwood-blue 44-gallon plastic trash bin and removed its lid, revealing tens of thousands of confiscated nail clippers.This isn’t something one sees every day. I mean to say, there were SO MANY NAIL CLIPPERS ALL IN ONE PLACE. I honestly felt like a lid had been removed from the ark in Raiders of the Lost Ark and I had been chosen to view its contents — and that maybe my face was going to melt off in a few moments.Then I remembered my thumbnail. Dang . . . it hurt. I posed the question: “Do you think there’s one set of nail clippers here that looks . . . perhaps more sanitary than any other?”We both scoured the top layer of nail clippers and my new friend selected an innocuous pair as might be found at any local drugstore. He handed them to me. “Thank you very much, sir.”“Have a safe flight.”

It’ll soon be 15 years since 9/11, and more planes are in the air than ever. This comes as a pleasant surprise, as on September 12 2001 it felt as though people would only ever fly a fraction of what they once flew, and that an old way of life was over. From an ecological standpoint, more people flying more than ever is a disaster, but from a social cohesion point of view, vigorous air travel comes as a great relief.In the months following 9/11, I undertook a 42-city book tour. The first city was Madison, Wisconsin, which is where I was marooned for five days. I tried to make lemonade out of lemons and thought, “What a great chance to have a really good look at the region’s bountiful Frank Lloyd Wright architecture!” Being Canadian, I was ineligible to rent a car as I might have tried to drive it to the border. So . . . I was marooned purely in Madison, Wisconsin, for five days.You could have hacked apart an undersea fibre-optic cable with a pre-9/11 steak knifeWhen flights in the US finally began resuming, the first thing I noticed was that I was usually the only person on the plane.

For about three weeks. And when meals arrived, instead of silverware the cutlery was a clear plastic bag filled with white plastic utensils like you’d get in a Wendy’s. That little bag with a plastic spoon, knife and fork became a haiku explaining one of humanity’s worst moments. My thoughts harkened back to Lufthansa’s pre-9/11 first class, where the steak knife was a stag’s antler embedded with what can only be described as a precision serrated steel hacksaw blade. You could have hacked apart an undersea fibre-optic cable with one of those things. A Wendy’s cutlery pack.Sometimes I feel like a character from Fahrenheit 451, except instead of remembering an entire novel my job is to remember a way of travelling that is quite likely gone for ever. But mostly my thinking time travels far, far off into the future, to the year 36,559, when whatever species it is that supplants humans is digging through a garbage dump somewhere outside of London, and finds a 44-gallon container filled with completely uncorroded stainless steel nail clippers.“