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Mindful Eating: Contemplative Culinary Experience

Justine Germond

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Originally from Paris, I am a designer passionate about creating sensory experiences. My work sits at the crossroads of design, art, hospitality, and emotion. With a background in Fine Art and strong experience in the food and hospitality industries, I am particularly interested in how spaces and concepts come together to create meaningful and memorable experiences.

Originally from Paris, I am a designer passionate about creating sensory experiences. My work sit...

In an era marked by speed, distraction, and overconsumption, this project is a contemplative culinary experience designed for mindful eating.

From my visit to the Solan Monastery, where the 20 nuns produce, sell and feed themselves through their work on the land, using a permaculture approach, I experienced mindful eating in a powerful moment of spirituality and sharing, paying attention to the surplus plate—a shared dish where you can place food you do not wish to eat, allowing others to take it or for you to come back at it.

This experiential dining piece explores a new system of eating and sharing during the meal. It reflects a mindful approach to food, its consumption and people around in the present moment. The exchange, interaction and connection with the piece inspire contemplation of nutrition—are you full, are you aware, are you conscious, are you connected—where is your focus? It is an exploration of food not as commodity, but as offering. 

The aim is to design a dining experience that transcends aesthetics and function—one that fosters gratitude, awareness, and communal engagement. The result is a multi-sensory tableware system that sits at the crossroads of spirituality, sustainability, and sensory design, proposing a mindful, ritualistic approach to eating.

Final work

  • Five round plywood individual plates and one communal one.
  • Flat piece of plywood as a base for the plates to join the communal plate.
  • Five round plywood individual plates forwards and backwards.
  • Top view of static layout showing plates arranged around a central serving base.
  • Top view showing plates in motion, moving towards the central base.
  • Top view illustrating the final interaction between the plates and the central serving base.
  • Linen napkins embroidered with a different coloured quote. On the right, a folded napkin holds a fork and knife secured together with a wooden ring.
  • One individual plywood plate, one embroidered linen napkin and cutlery with its cutlery holder.
  • Three uniquely shaped plywood serving utensils.
Five round plywood individual plates and one communal one placed on a plywood modular base.

Gathering around the Table of Mindfulness

This project proposes a new kind of table culture and new food system—one rooted in presence, respect, and interconnection. This project does not attempt to return to monastic life but reinterprets its lessons for the modern context. It proposes a new table culture—where meals are ceremonies of connection, not moments of distraction.

Inspired by the spiritual tableware and mindful traditions of Solan, by the circular innovations of Silo, and the transparency of De Kas, it asks: What kind of food experience and system can lead to a mindful nutrition? Can we shift our daily rituals into moments of reflection and consciousness?

The table becomes more than furniture—it transforms into a living dialogue. The design seeks to bridge that sacred gap between mindful table and material table—because ultimately, they are not separate.

Research and process

  • Photos of the Solan Monastery, its land and meal.
  • Photos of De Kas restaurant, its greenhouse and meal.
  • Photos of Silo restaurant, its fermentation tanks and meal.
  • Laser-cut plywood sheet with circular and curved design components partially removed.
  • Clamped plywood pieces being glued and assembled on a workbench.
  • Hand-assembled plywood in progress with circular base and side elements.

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Mindful Eating: Contemplative Culinary Experience

In an era marked by speed, distraction, and overconsumption, this project is a contemplative culinary experience designed for mindful eating.From my visit to the Solan Monastery, where the 20 nuns produce, sell and feed ...

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