Take Away: 200 years of design for eating on the move

The only UK showing of Take Away – design for eating on the move runs at The Lighthouse, Scotland’s national Architecture and Design Centre, from 25 February – 8 June 2008

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Welcome to the 21st century - the days of the global market place and 24-hour grazing. How often do we walk through the streets, coffee “to go” in one hand and a take away meal in the other, listening to the latest download on our i-pods? Or taking advantage of the latest cheap deal, grab a quick in-flight meal before setting out to explore new and exciting places? As the pace of life has changed so has the need to provide food for places and spaces outside the home, and design has played a fundamental role both in creating new solutions and adapting existing products to meet this need.

Food on the move is not, however, a new concept but dates back to more leisurely times - the summer picnic was a highlight of the social calendar for certain strata of society from the early 18th century. By Victorian times hay boxes had been designed that would keep meals hot for the winter shoot, whilst on warmer days packed baskets were opened to reveal a cornucopia of edible delights. Meanwhile at the other end of the social scale as industrialisation saw machines setting the pace, and with 12-14 hour days the norm, workers began eat in factories, consuming food brought from home.

By the 1930s summer boating parties would jam the Cam and the Isis and in the post-war period, as car ownership increased, country picnics and days on the beach became central leisure activities. In the late 20th century, with air travel shrinking the world and global communications ushering in a 24 hour working day, a whole new style of eating – the fast food take away – was then developed to meet the needs on people on the move.

For its first international show of 2008 The Lighthouse offers the only UK showing of Take Away - design for eating on the move, a major exhibition illustrating how design has responded to the changing nature of food consumption outside the home. “Design is a fundamental part of everyday life,” says Nick Barley, director of The Lighthouse. “In Take Away, which has its only UK showing here in Glasgow, we see a fascinating narrative of changing social times. From luxurious picnic baskets to mass-produced fast food containers, canteens carried by the great explorers to in-flight tableware and portable gramophones to I-pods, the objects in the exhibition demonstrate how design solutions have been created to meet the ever changing needs of life on the move.”

In the introduction to the exhibition catalogue Norbert Wild, curator of the design collection at Museum Gestaltung, Zurich writes, “Take Away food is symptomatic of our fast and furious lifestyle with all its advantages and disadvantages – as necessity or absolute convenience, as an excuse for vulgar displays of public eating, as a socio environmental and aesthetic phenomenon….. Look beyond these facts and observations about mobile consumption and you’ll discover an entire subculture of objects.”

Take Away – design for eating on the move is an exhibition from Museum Gestaltung, Zurich. The exhibition catalogue and an associated range of contemporary designs for eating on the move - including the Qoffee Stool, the “Wallet” fish and chip tool (by Touch of Ginger), Rob Brandt’s “Crinkled Cup” and the “Abra Cadabra touch bowl” (from Kahla) - will be on sale at The Lighthouse Shop, in person at 11 Mitchell lane Glasgow, by telephone on +44 (0) 141 225 8422 and on line via www.thelighthouse.co.uk/shop.

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