FoodNests in Gwangju Design Biennale 2011

Food nest were featured at Gwangju Design Biennale in 2011

Diane Bisson's Food Nests were featured in the Gwangju Design Biennale from September through the end of October in Gwangju, South Korea. The 4th edition of the Design Biennale had more than 800,000 visitors, and the Food Nest samples are also featured in the 2-volume catalog published by the Biennale event.


See Jelly and Crunchy food nest projects pages for more info

World Cookbook Awards

After several rounds of judging and a record number of submissions from around the globe, Edible has won one of the most prestigious food book design prizes possible! Recipient of the prize for "Best Cookbook Design in the World for Professionals", Edible takes fourth place worldwide among the more than 8,000 submissions of books on wine and food. We are very honored to be recognized for this innovative project in such an international forum.

Alcuin Society Book Design Award

Edible : Food as material has won a bronze in the 2010 Alcuin excellence in book design awards, in the "Prose, Non-fiction, illustrated" category. The Alcuin Society, which began in 1981, is the only national book design competition in Canada. Winning books are contributed to permanent collections in Canada, the UK, Germany and Japan. This year's competition was judged by Marian Bantjes, Linda Gustafson and Peter Koch, some of the industries' top talents.

The Alcuin Award winning books will be exhibited internationally: in Germany, at the Frankfurt and Leipzig Book Fairs; in England, at the Norfolk and Norwich Millennium Library and the Norwich University College of the Arts; and in Japan, at the Canadian Embassy in Tokyo, in conjunction with the Tokyo International Book Fair. The books will also be exhibited in 19 venues across Canada.

We're very honored to receive this award!

Book launch - Edible: Food as material

Close up of Edible food as material book cover

Edible: food as material explores the concept of the edible plate or container as a viable cultural and material model for reducing waste. The book gives account of the experimental work in gastronomy and food science conducted during the outset of the Taste No Waste® Project, which served to validate a wide range of recipes and techniques for transforming edible matter. Edible introduces food into the array of production materials. The food explorations, presented in the book as material samples, illustrate the production processes and the possible scope and forms for a multitude of future edible containers and plates. They also illustrate the potential of vegetables, fruits and innovative new flours in producing nutritional and colourful products.

The book also offers a chart of food transformation processes explored through the project, as well as a chart of food listed by colors.

The book is aimed at artisans from the culinary field, diverse professionals from the food-processing milieu, culinary creators, and designers interested in the creative possibilities and production processes in food design.

By combining anthropology and design, Diane Leclair Bisson offers a reflection on our rapport with food and our dining rituals. Edible is compelling both for its artistic approach, accentuated by Pol Baril's photographs which highlight the vibrant colours and varied textures of the food, and for the questions raised by the author on the concepts of design, gastronomy and sustainable development.

The book has received enormous recognition in the food community worldwide and has been presented in many forums, academic conferences and book fairs internationally. It has won numerous design awards, and is an important reference in this emerging field of food-design. The book has received the Gourmand International’s World Cookbook Awards, as well as the prestigious Canadian Alcuin Book Design Award.

Edible, Food as material / Comestible, l'aliment comme matériau. 128 pages, colour, full texts in French and English, soft cover, $24.95. Published by les éditions du passage

Available from Amazon.ca here.

Available from Renaud Bray (Québec) here.

Available from Archambault (Québec)


See project page for more info