As mentioned in the Brief, the impacts of climate change are reflected across all scales and levels, including any type of boundary such as geographical or social. Our project ‘Know Your Bites’ aims to call for students to pay closer attention to CO2 emissions within UAL catering and to promote environmental awareness. We investigated and calculated the carbon emissions of various food types in the UAL canteen. In order to transform specific data into a Net Zero strategy that better promotes communication, transformation, and connection, we designed a system that is both visual and actionable. We reclassified the ingredients of each dish in the menu by their carbon emissions and, combining color, graphics, and letterpress, designed a series of menus and cards to stimulate audience engagement, integrating carbon emission information into the daily dining of audiences through interactive forms. This project aims to guide students from unconsciousness to an active focus on the ‘Net Zero and Sustainability Implementation Plan’, fostering their continuous attention to seasonal food and food choices under an environmental ecology. Meanwhile, as a participant in this process, as the project progressed, this reflection on observing and focusing on environmental issues from daily life has also become part of shaping my personal awareness, leading me to focus on such topics more continuously and participate in them more actively in the future.
1. HICKEL, J. (2020). Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World. London: William Heinemann.
In this text, Hickel elaborates on the connection between ‘Less Is More’ and ‘Degrowth’, exploring and critiquing the flaws of the binary opposition between humans and nature in Enlightenment philosophy, a perspective that provides core support for our project. Based on Hickel’s discourse on ‘resource limits’ and ‘ecological regeneration’, the root cause of the climate crisis and ecological collapse lies in an economic system aimed at infinite growth. Pursuing infinite GDP growth within the finite resources of the Earth is inherently unsustainable. Therefore, Hickel proposes ‘Degrowth’ as an alternative path to planned reduction of unnecessary production and consumption, changing the current state of overexploitation of the global environment.
We extended our research direction toward finding a balance between humans and ecology, reflecting on how to use existing environments and resources in a transformative form to stimulate environmental awareness. Consequently, we chose to incorporate seasonal food into participatory design, transforming food choice from an unconscious act of consumption into a systemic interactive experience. This critiques the current market’s numbness and dependence on globalized supply chains and uses design practice to shape ecological care.
2. SHUKIN, N. (2009). Animal Capital: Rendering Life in Biopolitical Times. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press
In Animal Capital, Shukin reimagines what constitutes animal life, exploring how animal life is transformed into ‘value’ within the contemporary capitalist production system and exploited and utilized on both material and symbolic levels. Based on this, Shukin proposes the concept of ‘Rendering’. In the context of this book, ‘Rendering’ possesses a double meaning: on one hand, animals serve as rendered material resources; on the other hand, animals are treated as a symbolic resource that can be visually represented (render image). Shukin draws upon Michel Foucault’s concept of ‘Biopolitics’ in the book, namely the management and governance of life, to discuss how modern power manages animal life and how animal life is commodified, revealing that animals have become a form of life that can be extracted at will.
Shukin’s theoretical framework prompts us to examine the carbon emission data provided in databases, which simplify animals, vegetables, and land into formulas, reflecting the alienation and marginalization of life through symbolic rendering. This perspective reminds us: are these data merely abstracting living beings and simplifying them into calculable units within market logic? Therefore, our research also encompasses how to reshape the visibility and the right to existence of life within the context of the contemporary world. Consequently, we organized the carbon emission data of food in the UAL canteen and, through re-design, transformed the numbers back into a form that can be seen, allowing audiences to have a clearer perception of animal life.
3. COLOMINA, B. and WIGLEY, M. (2016). Are We Human? Notes on an Archaeology of Design. Zürich: Lars Müller Publishers.
In this book, the dialectical relationship of mutual shaping between design and humans is revealed. Colomina and Wigley argue that design is not a tool created by humans, but rather the two shape each other, providing a driving force for humanity in this process. The book mentions, ‘Design is everywhere, and we are completely suspended in design.’ This perspective inspired our thinking, and we view the project ‘Know Your Bites’ as a bond connecting design and humans, combining CO2 emissions data, design, and our thoughts as a form of co-created two way communication. This bidirectionality also means that when audiences read the CO2 emissions information through our visual system, they are also participating in the process of co-evolution through design intervention. The displays in the menu and the indentations in the letterpress shape the sensory experience of every participant. We use ‘Know Your Bites’ to explore how design implants the previously absent environmental perception into peoples daily intuition, thereby subtly shaping peoples perception of ecology through every dietary choice.
4. KLOPPENBURG, J., HENDRICKSON, J. and STEVENSON, G.W., 1996. Coming into the foodshed. Agriculture and Human Values, pp. 33-42.
We chose Coming into the foodshed (Kloppenburg, Hendrickson and Stevenson, 1996) as a reference, providing our project with a critical geographical and sociological perspective. As a foundational work in foodshed studies, this article challenges the spatial alienation brought by globalized food systems and proposes the necessity of repairing the relationship between humans and the ecological environment by reconstructing local ‘food identity’. In the specific context of the UAL canteen, students are passive consumers detached from the source of production. This article allows us to present the reduction of food miles through design and provides purpose and meaning for lowering CO2 emissions.
Inspired by this, we focused on seasonal ingredients and designed a set of canteen cards based on the foodshed concept, guiding audiences to step beyond the alienated feelings of the global food system (Kloppenburg et al., 1996, p. 35). From the critique of macro systems to the transformation of micro design, this both responds to the theme of space and scale and reshapes a food citizenship with local perception within the UAL canteen, making environmental care an action that people actively desire to connect with. This truly achieves the reconstruction of the relationship between humans and the food system within the campus context.
5. QUENEAU, R. (1998) Exercises in Style. London: John Calder.
In Exercises in Style, Queneau reconstructed the same story through ninety nine stylistic variations. He stripped away the narrative rhetoric, retaining only the overall structure of the story to reshape textual meaning and reader perception, forming a series of systemic deconstructive grammars.
Queneau’s writing experiments emphasized that ‘form is content’, and inspired by this, we view the UAL kgCO2e data as a narrative master text to be dismantled. We then conducted experiments in visual style exploration on this entity.
Under this design logic, the kgCO2e data of the dishes was dismantled by us into different ingredient categories. Based on the kgCO2e content of each dish, we rearranged the dishes on the menu in order from minimum kgCO2e to maximum kgCO2e, creating a rhythmic spatial order. Through the imbalance and emphasis of visual proportions, audiences can intuitively understand the kgCO2e weight of each dish through the area occupied by the icons, prompting them to establish a deep logical digestion of the food carbon footprint within this highly organized visual grammar.
6. AMODESTI, E., GRANDE, N. and VALLEJO, S. (eds.) (2023). FOODSCAPES: Spanish Pavilion at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. [Online] e-flux. Available at: https://www.e-flux.com/announcements/531430/foodscapes [Accessed 1 Mar. 2026].
FOODSCAPES (2023) is a project in the Spanish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, which transforms the food system from a consumption behavior into a perspective of metabolic architecture. The Total Recipes project within FOODSCAPES reveals the massive infrastructure chain connected behind every bite of food, from greenhouses and logistics networks to cold chains, linking the menu system with ecological reality.
This project also influenced our way of deconstructing the menu. Traditional recipes often obscure the production chain, whereas this project advocates for clearly layering the origins of food. Therefore, we combined the stylistic variations of Exercises in Style with the Total Recipes from this project to dismantle each dish into five major systems: seasoning, vegetable, carbohydrate, dairy, and meat. Through the color gradients and grid order in the menu, we intuitively present the food production chain to audiences, encouraging more people to participate. Ultimately, we hope this knowledge does not only stay in the canteen. We look forward to students taking what they have learned back home, sharing it with others, and applying it to their daily lives.
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