Taste The Now

Taste The Now

Taste The Now

The project “Taste The Now” was developed for the Vienna Design Week 2019 together with five Viennese pastry chefs
and five designers. In a polycreative process, I first interviewed five top Viennese pastry chefs about tradition and how
they see the Viennese cake and coffee culture developing in the future. Following that, five cake collages were created,
using a selection of each patisserie’s cakes and sweet treats, thereby creating a potential new cake design that plays with
tradition by using the usual cakes, and simultaneously suggests new gustatory possibilities that could be endowed with
new stories. The images and interviews were sent on to a set of designers who were asked to design a new packaging
concept for one of the collages and correlating interviews. These were completely open and free to the designers creative
interpretation, following no conventional guidelines of production, cost or functionality. Ranging from a sugar cube
design to a mousetrap, a broad and imaginative selection of new packagings were developed especially for the unique
and fictional cake collages.

The aim was to reexamine local traditions around the famous Viennese cake and coffee culture. Taking a step back
from day to day practicalities such as production requirements or marketable products, this project focused upon personal
stories and individual experiences of the bakers and designers, thereby revealing – as well as questioning – traditional
narratives in a non-commercial light.
In an additional step, the two week exhibition set up at the Vienna Design Week 2019
invited guests, in a series of cake talks, to join the exhibition table – a traditionally round table with Thonet chairs, as is
custom in Viennese coffeehouses – to share their stories from personal experiences, thereby building an arch all the way
from producer to consumer.

Concept & Execution
Orlando Lovell

Design & Execution 
studio_lovell

Co-curated
David Bachmann

Polycreative Cake Collaborators
Café Central
Crème de la Crème
Demel
Fruth
Parémi

Polycreative Design Collaborators
Daniel Triendl
Gosia Rygalik
Janar Siniloo
Kollektiv Plus Zwei
3007

Check here for more information on this Fruth pastry and packaging by Daniel Triendl.

Check here for more information on this Café Central pastry and packaging by Janar Siniloo.

Check here for more information on this Crème de la Crème pastry and packaging by 3007.

Check here for more information on this Demel pastry and packaging by Kollektiv Plus Zwei.

Check here for more information on this Parèmi pastry and packaging by Gosia Rygalik.

Exhibition photography  © Kollektiv Fischka