What if design had a taste?
The exhibition Savour, presented by the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague (UMPRUM) as part of Brussels Design September, offers precisely that experience — to perceive design in the same way we perceive food. Here, gastronomy and the material world are not separated — on the contrary, students from the Product Design department merge them into a single canvas. A new kind of “kitchen” unfolds before the viewer — not a culinary one, but a design kitchen, where material and form become ingredients, and craft traditions serve as spices.
In the halls of Prague House, tableware, lighting, and glass created in collaboration with Bomma and Květná factories sit alongside projects inspired by gastronomic rituals. These objects are like stories sealed in glass: glasses emerging from molten quartz, lamps whose light seems to continue the play of fire in the furnace.
A bit of history — about 30 years ago, the production of glass beer mugs in the Czech Republic, two items of national pride — beer and glass (remember “Bohemian glass”) — was halted and imported from Germany (!). The university is literally recreating this traditional part of the industry, training professional designers in the almost forgotten craft of beer mugs — and even taking it to a contemporary level. By the way Belgium does not have this tradition, offering “beer glasses” rather than mugs.
A special highlight is the collaboration with the culinary collective Ambiente. Here, design literally tastes gastronomy: the installations remind us that dining is about space, atmosphere, and tactile experience. Perhaps for the first time, one can feel that tableware can be as expressive as the dishes they carry. For example, the project Cooking the Craft collaborated with renowned chef Frantisek Skopec, producing a saucer inspired by his cuisine that resembles a dessert like crème brûlée frozen in a photographic stop-frame.
The exhibition speaks of everyday rituals — from a beer mug to a restaurant lamp — as a cultural code. Through objects, we learn to read gastronomy both as a set of flavors and as a language of communication, craft, and memory. Savour is an invitation to slow, thoughtful perception — to pause, look closely, and “touch with your eyes.” After all, like fine food, good design is not swallowed — it is savored.
Brussels Design September has long collaborated with the hospitable Prague House (established in the charming Ambiorix district of Brussels two years before the Czech Republic joined the EU in 2002). As journalists, we always leave press conferences with jars of Czech jam and juice (not bribes, just a friendly gesture!)). But such a cohesive, powerful, conceptual exhibition — enhanced with silkscreen prints of plants and shrubs whose fruits and leaves are used in wine and beer, and a photograph of Sophia Loren holding a glass of Czech crystal — like Savour, in my view, is being presented there for the first time.