A Light BrunchA lightbox designed to illuminate food
Collaborator: Natalie Stottler For a pop-up class project about food and design, I decided that the best way to improve the experience of a meal is to add LEDs (as any good engineer knows). Natalie came up with a multi-course meal that lets light shine through in creative ways, and I designed a box to diffusely illuminate any food placed on top of it. Pictured at right are just three offerings from the meal: window scones (with plum and tangerine), french toast squares, and blood-orange mimosa. The french toast came with four sauce options: nectarine-rosemary, strawberry-mint, apricot-cayenne, and passionfruit. The menu was rastered on a clear sheet of quarter-inch acrylic. I constructed the box out of an 8-foot length of 2x2 pine and wired a 12V LED strip at the base of the platform. The LEDs were diffused by a 60%-opacity sheet of 1/8" white acrylic. I built an additional level of Duron to further distance the LEDs from the diffusing plastic. I finished the wood with a layer of danish oil. The box was powered by a 12V (1A) AC-DC converter and could be turned on/off with the flick of a toggle switch. |