The Decolonized Decarbonized Dinner Party

A

Decolonized

&

Decarbonized Dinner Party

Parsons The New School

&

Decarbonized Dinner Party

This book is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. The author and publisher do not offer it as professional services advice. The best efforts were made in preparing this book, but the author and publisher make no representations or warranties of any kind and assume no liabilities of any kind with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. Neither the author nor the publisher shall be held liable or responsible to any person or entity with respect to any loss or incidental or consequential damages caused, or alleged to have been caused, directly or indirectly, by the information contained herein.

Graphic design: Original Copy

Typefaces: UltraSolar, ABC Diatype

© Michele Gorman, Yvette Chaparro, and Preeti Gopinath

With contributions by Lin Yee Yuan, Antonia Craig, Yvonne Watson, David J. Lewis, and Ben Barry.

Food can be a radical landscape for imagining new ways of being, living, and making during this time of crisis. Food is a living system. Food is family. Food is culture. Food is place. Food is material.

What better space for design to play and imagine, given the intersection of these threads we already consider in our practices?

I often think of the words of Dean Spade, a law professor and community organizer who recently published a book on mutual aid. He writes, “By participating in groups in new ways and practicing new ways of being together, we are both building the world we want and becoming the kind of people who could live in such a world together.” Gathering around the table for a meal is one such way of practicing new ways of being together, and in the context of design, the process of creating the table itself—and all the tools for preparing, serving, and enjoying the meal together—is an extension of this act of practicing. These eating tools can be the foundation of new rituals, and the process of considering the materiality of these tools can lead the way.

Foregrounding pleasure, joy, conviviality and belonging is the critical work of designers working with food. Humans were designed to eat—it is the only thing we do besides sex that engages all of our senses. It is no wonder that the joy and intimacy of eating with one’s hands is foundational to who we are. For some cultures, most foods are enjoyed hand to mouth. For others, it’s the foods eaten with abandon—street food, snacks, late-night eats—that allow us to fully savor the sensorial pleasures of our food. And why not eat the packaging itself?

Lin Yee Yuan

Today is the day to remove plastics from our food system. The urgent shift to non-extractive modes of creation can only be ushered in at scale if we engage these approaches. As the seed activist Vandana Shiva reminds us, “the future of food depends on remembering that the web of life is a food web.”

Instead of merely being consumers, it is time to be creative collaborators in this food web. Our mutual survival depends on recognizing that we are all intimately connected—human to human, human to more-than-human. Start where you are. In your building, on your block, at your local park, in your neighborhood, in your town, in your city, in your region, we can make a difference by creating a sense of belonging for yourself and for your neighbors. Food is the catalyst.

Sharing a meal or the joy of preparing food for your loved ones can be an open invitation for collaboration. What will be on the menu for the dinner party of your most radical imagining?

From the

The idea of the Decolonized & Decarbonized Dinner Party was born amidst the backdrop of several ongoing conversations at Parsons centered around decoloniality and sustainability in the context of climate justice and food insecurity. As Graduate Program Directors and thought leaders in Industrial Design, Interior Design, and Textiles, we were excited to collaborate and create a cross-disciplinary workshop series involving our students, graduates and faculty to consider, explore, and demonstrate our potential impact as designers, bringing different skills and a common purpose to the table.

Working with material scientists, chefs, writers, as well as interior, industrial, textile, and architectural designers, we launched the workshop series in March of 2022 to speculate and experiment with how we might close the gap on food waste in New York City and mine the waste as a material resource. The workshops, which engaged in topics of Materiality and Food (p.18), Rituals of Eating (p.24), and Making for Eating (p.28), provided an opportunity for our students and faculty to interact and create interdisciplinary work like never before. These workshops practiced community design-making through experimenting with materials and techniques, making objects with food waste, designing the packaging, and presenting socially just decarbonizing practices.

The workshop presentations sparked new questions from the students such as, “What are the future rituals of eating in a circular design economy?” “How does this challenge the current norms of the spaces of dining and our kitchen as a space to just cook and dispose?” “How do my own rituals, stories and background come into the process?”

The series culminated in a meaningful and thoughtprovoking dinner party performance, in a celebration of Earth Day 2022. Through this cross-school

collaborative project, we facilitated a coming together of students, alumni, and faculty from different disciplines, learning from each other, as we collectively inquired about food, waste, and experimentation in the context of decarbonization and decoloniality. The aim of the dinner party was to bring attention to the impact that global warming has on our local communities. Using food waste, circular design strategies as well as industrial and craft techniques, students created objects such as plates, cutlery, stools, candelabra, décor and table setting designs.

On April 22nd, 2022, a group of enthusiastic guests attended our Decolonized & Decarbonized Dinner Party. Guests contributions ranged from food waste from their recent meal, to new points for our Manifesto, and the sharing of additional informational resources. Some simply came to listen, learn and enjoy a delicious meal that was prepared by Chef Eduardo Castro and Yasmina Huckins. At the end of the dinner party, participants and guests took some of the leftover food home, some food scraps were saved to test out student biomaterial recipes, and the rest was composted at the Union Square Farmers Market. A suitably thoughtful and considered ending to an inspirational evening!

(From left to right) MFA Directors Michele Gorman, Yvette Chaparro, and Preeti Gopinath

Decolonized & Decarbonized Dinner Party Exhibition

Please join us for a carbon free “Dinner Party” on April 22nd, Earth Day. This interdisciplinary exhibition and performative event asks big questions on socially just approaches to the future of eating within our climate crisis. Bringing attention to the impact that global warming has on our NYC communities, the contributions to the Dinner Party use decarbonizing practices within our local food economies. Using food waste and circular design strategies, students will create objects such as tables, plates, cutlery, candelabra, and linens that will be used in a performative event and exhibition. The Dinner Party and Workshops are generously supported by the Parsons School of Design, the School of Constructed Environments (SCE), and the SCE Curriculum Committee.

#waste #foodinsecurity #circulardesigneconomies #parsons_mfaid_thesis #parsons_mfaidd_thesis #parsonsmfainteriordesign #parsonsmfaindustrialdesign #parsonsmfatextilesdesign

For more information, please contact MFA Industrial Design Director, Yvette Chapparo, MFA Interior Design Director, Michele Gorman, and Director of MFA Textiles, Preeti Gopinath.

Date, time: 6:00pm Earth Day / April 22nd, 2022

Location: Parsons School of Design

2 West 13th, NYC 4th floor

Outside guests must follow New School protocols Rsvp

Land Recognition

For the Decolonized & Decarbonized Dinner Party, we gathered on the unceded land of the Munsee Lenape peoples.

We ask you to join us in acknowledging the Lenape community, their elders both past and present, as well as future generations.

The New School also acknowledges that it was founded upon exclusions and erasures of many Indigenous peoples, including those on whose land this institution is located.

This acknowledgment demonstrates a commitment to beginning the process of working to dismantle the ongoing legacies of settler colonialism.

We define decarbonizing practices in design as carbonnegative construction and making of our current objects, interiors, spaces to be more energy efficient, reduce emissions and support more equitable, healthier New York City communities.

We define decoloniality in design as a process of shifting power and making space for other voices at the table, material and design practices. Decoloniality is a way for us to re-learn the knowledge that has been pushed aside, forgotten, buried or discredited by the forces of modernity, settler-colonialism, and racial capitalism.

design by Sam Tong

Affirmations of Work and

“The promise of the New School is that this is a place where multiple disciplines come together to innovate and collaborate on solutions that will change our world. Balancing our needs to meet degree requirements alongside creating opportunities for our students and faculty to collaborate across programs can be a challenge. Interdisciplinary opportunities such as these are vital to the fulfillment of our mission and vision and meeting student expectations when they come to Parsons School of Design at the New School.”

Antonia Craig Assistant Dean, Curricular Affairs Dean’s Office

“Developing interventions and reclaiming knowledge devalued through colonization and capitalism is vital to the pursuit of social and climate justice. Through art and design, we can cultivate these practices and shift dominant cultural attitudes through sensory and affective engagement. The Decolonized & Decarbonized Workshops and Dinner Party brought to life the power and possibility of art and design to foster a more socially and environmentally just world. In particular, this collaboration between MFA Textiles, MFA Interiors, and MFA Industrial Design demonstrated the brilliance that comes from bringing together students and faculty across lived experiences and disciplinary practices. For Parsons and for art and design schools globally, this project is a model for how to be in relation with each other to make and remake worlds.”

Ben Barry Dean, School of Fashion Associate Professor of Equity and Inclusion

Interdisciplinary Knowledge Sharing

“When ‘decarbonization’ is discussed, it is often framed as a technical question, one of calculations, metrics, and the imperatives of new systems of renewable electrification. What is lost in this technologically deterministic approach to addressing global warming and climate collapse is the question of culture, power, and history at the center of our decision-making frameworks. The Decolonized & Decarbonized Dinner Party makes this uncoupling of climate and culture impossible. The practices performed through these collective engagements put us all at the table, face to face with long legacies and future possibilities surfaced in the complex and interwoven rituals and materials of everyday sustenance.”

David J. Lewis Dean, School of Constructed Environments

“Parsons is known for its creativity and innovation in teaching, learning, and critically engaged pedagogy. The Decolonized & Decarbonized Dinner Party is an example of an innovative project, intersectional in its framing, speaking to marginalized populations who live on the borders of society and centering multiple discourses. Pressing issues such as climate and food injustice are authentically explored through the lens of EISJ principles. Here students and faculty are collaborators, discovering how design thinking can impact the wicked problems and challenges that we face globally. This is what bell hooks’s engaged pedagogy looks like, as liberatory practice in action, with a commitment to alter humanity!”

Yvonne Watson Dean, Curriculum & Learning Advisor to the Provost Office on Curriculum School of Fashion

We collectively write a manifesto for this dinner party

We must decolonize through all species collaboration— in decomposition and in growth—reposition the human as a part of nature which doesn’t create waste, considering the full cycles of materials/ foods, and educating others around compost.

We must use decolonized methodology (including ecological practices).

We must reframe waste as valuable, shifting towards a circular economy.

We must incorporate food waste into our food experience instead of an after product that is discarded.

It must be made from food waste, be composted completely afterwards.

We must build a community around food waste as it is food.

Through seeing the abundance of restaurants and its food waste as a resource to design with... collecting food waste at local restaurants to make the artifacts of the dinner table such as the cups, the linens, the plates.

We must consider using of all parts of the meal, even the bits we do not consider culturally accepted to eat, and its storage to use later for making.

We must allow bacteria back into the kitchen for processes such as fermentation.

We must collect avocado pits, onion peels, coffee grinds to produce natural dyes.

We must build composting into the dinner table.

We must grow our design objects.

We must rethink gardening, eating and crafting as a participatory design practice to build community.

We must reclaim New York City’s Chinatown through shared kitchens designed to support intergenerational knowledge sharing.

We must create decolonizing cookbooks to address anti-Asian hate in New York City.

We must design as a community and not for a community.

Contribute to the manifesto if you are so moved.

Source: https://www.rts.com/resources/ guides/food-waste-america/

More than 80 percent of Americans discard perfectly good food because they misunderstand expiration labels.

Food takes up more space in U.S. landfills than anything else.

Globally, we waste about 1.4 billion tons of food every year.

Americans discard more food than any other country, nearly 40 million tons—or 30–40 percent of the entire U.S. food supply.

The majority of this waste comes from our homes and restaurants.

Before the pandemic, 35 million people across America had food insecurity. That number is expected to rise to as much as 50 million in 2022.

Wasting food contributes to 11 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Workshops

Workshops

Materiality + Food

The launch of the Decolonized & Decolonized workshops and dinner party talks was introduced by organizers and directors Yvette Chaparro, Michele Gorman, and Preeti Gopinath, and moderated by MFA Industrial Design part-time faculty LinYee Yuan, editor of the recent issue of Mold on Food Waste.

As the following workshops embody the material practice that works toward the mitigation of carbon, this panel discussion addressed inequities and systemic issues within food systems impacting New York City communities. Decolonization is a process of shifting power and making space for other practices. This panel discussion proposed socially just decarbonizing practices within the built environment addressing decoloniality as a process.

LinYee shared global projects that asked questions around the future of food. The work celebrates waste as a resource and a material to be harvested in a closed-loop, networked economy through the lenses of food preservation, material futures, and dignity for the hungry.

MFA Interior Design student Jia Wei Samantha Tong discussed her thesis research and design around preservation of cultural identity, self-orientalism, shared kitchens, and decoloniality through food in New York’s Chinatown.

Jonsara Ruth, co-founder and director of the Healthy Materials Lab and MFA Interior Design faculty, spoke on materials and food, the right to healthy materials in our built environment to mitigate health issues, and designed a food event series called After Taste at the launch of the MFA ID program.

GrowNYC’s director Mike Renzy spoke on the impact of climate change on the New York community, and his community garden project that reclaims green space

and closes the gap on food waste in New York through compositing.

LinYee moderated an open Q&A that spurred a conversation between guests and students on the idea of circulatory in the panelists’ work. Jonsara Ruth asked big questions, provocations, and optimism in response: “Do we need to produce anything new? There is so much waste. We have enough. There is so much matter to work with as designers. The opportunities are endless.”

To watch the Workshop video, pleease scan the QR code:

Materiality + Food

The first in-person Decolonized & Decarbonized workshop engaged material practices using food waste. An interdisciplinary cohort from the interiors, industrial, product, textiles, architectural design, and material sciences programs were in attendance and ready to engage in tactile hands-on material experimentation outside of their disciplinary bounds.

Directors Michele Gorman and Yvette Chaparro gave context to the Dinner Party on International Women’s Day and references Judy Chicago’s 1970s Dinner Party, which engages feminist art practices through a collective-art making process to build a community from marginalized voices and validates forms of domestic labor and crafting in the art world.

TÔMTEX partners, Uyen Tran (2021 MFA Textiles

alumna, Bio-Material Award winner) and Ross McBee (PhD in Material Science), introduced their company: “Tômtex is a 100% biobased material created from shell seafood waste or mushroom, with the aim to work as a sustainable and economical alternative instead of faux and animal leather. It is 100% natural, biodegradable, free of plastic, and PLA.” McBee discussed the underlying structure and properties of mycelium and Tran discussed the design of the material, reframing waste as luxury, seeing materials as temporary, and its future application between fashion and interiors.

MFA and BFA Interior Design faculty, and MFA ID

alumna, Sam Bennett, spatially displayed an array of biomaterial experiments and objects, showcasing ingredients such as coffee grinds, used to create a cup of coffee, corn husks used to create a bowl, orange peels used to create plates, and agar to create bioplastics. She provided resources such as Materiom for students to experiment on their own.

Sam Bennett presents a range of biomaterials to create everyday objects.

Photogrammetry scan of the Decolonized & Decarbonized Materiality + Food Workshop

Rituals of Eating

After the students enjoyed some pizza, the session started with Dana D’Amico, a part-time faculty in the Product Design program. Dana’s presentation focused on eating and the historial basis for how the rituals of eating through artefacts have developed.

The workshop explored keeping the responsibility of material and manufacturing decisions at the forefront of the process of design, producing not only new objects for eating, but also new rituals. The pizza boxes from earlier in the evening were used to develop new designs by manipulating the boxes, the students shared their ideas and possible ways of keeping the boxes from the landfill. The belief is that all cardboard can be recycled but research shows that once the cardboard boxes are stained with grease, the boxes cannot be recycled. The question Dana posed is, “can greasy pizza boxes be seen as a material to design with as to avoid the landfill?”

The second presenter, Yu Nong Khew, an assistant professor of Interior Design, centered around the research based on composting experiments, ending with research based on mycelium-growing preliminary experiments, with various possible applications. She explained that mycelium could spawn on the greasy cardboard pizza boxes in flat sheets, transforming them into design objects like acoustic panels.

The explanation of how the experiments developed and how decisions have been made to answer questions while moving the process along was very valuable for the students.

Yu Nong Khew shares mycelium research.

Top: Students Perri Eppie and Tanya Puri examine a sample brought by workshop presenter Yu Nong Khew. Bottom: Student Martine Arranz constructs a new project.

Student Ian Adler presents his pizza-box lamp, constructed from a used and greasy pizza box.

Making for Eating

Layla Nathanael Klinger Nowak, a part-time faculty in the MFA Textiles program and alumna from the program, talked the students through the process of bobbin lace and the development of different tools, strategies, and methods to construct space-based lace pieces. Through the exploration of different materials such as conductive metal wire, new interactions with the users and observers are implemented including lighting and technological sequences, to create new environments that react and change.

Layla demonstrated the technique of bobbin lace for the class and showed samples of other techniques such as natural solar dyeing of fabrics by using food waste, such as avocado pits, onion skins, coffee, etc.

In our Student Share Session, a group of students from the MFA Industrial Design program—Midori Hongo, Nifemi Ogunro, and Weronika Banas—presented their project, Debris: The Future of Consumption. The project, initiated in their second semester Studio 2: Local Production, looks at the future of waste as a source for food production, making the argument that if our consumption practices do not change, we will have to adapt to the environment we are creating and add enzymes to our dining experience to allow humans to digest the waste and artificial environments we are creating.

Chef Eduardo Castro was in attendance to give feedback.

Layla Nathanael Klinger Nowak demonstrates Bobbin Lace technique to Lina Celis Rengifo.

Top: Demonstration of composite cables upcycled for weaving and interactive textile. Bottom: Natural dyed wool iterations using food waste

Top: Bobbin Lace technique from Layla Nathanael Klinger Nowak.

Bottom: Demonstration of composite cables upcycled for weaving and interactive textile

Contributions

Air Pearls

Midori Hongo

MFA Industrial Design

Midori Hongo innovated a new, fun way to hydrate through her project Air Pearls. Designed for staying hydrated on airplanes and reducing plastic waste, this multisensory hydration set is made of small sphered biogels. The gels are a new form of food made from plant-based gels in watermelon, apple, tomato, cantaloupe flavors, and coated with an alginate membrane.

Displayed at the Decolonized and Decarbonized Dinner Party, her agar-based serving tools show their process of biodegradation (about 2-4 months).

For recipe details, please see page 108.

BioLight Peels

Madina Masimova

MFA Interior Design

Paula Rodriguez

MFA Interior Design

Concerned about the climate crisis and overproduction, Madina Masimova and Paula Rodriguez experimented with biomaterials and natural dyes from food waste such as fruit peels and eggshells.

To bring the poetics of light to their biomaterial explorations, they created a lamp. They also wanted to explore circular design strategies which worked with nature to create compostable materials.

For recipe details, please see page 108.

Biomaterials with Corn Husks

Elisa Lutteral

MFA Textiles

Elisa Lutteral designed various biomaterials for the Decolonized and Decarbonized Dinner Party from corn husks. She gathered and collected corn husks from local street markets and supermarkets.

For recipe details, please see page 109.

Elisa Lutteral

MFA Textiles

Elisa Lutteral’s work BIOskin Mask from orange peel bioplastic creates a dialogue between the body and the environment.

For recipe details, please see page 110.

Ceramic Eating Vessels

Maria José Canon Henao

MFA Product Design

Maria José Canon Henao designed ceramic eating vessels for the Decolonized and Decarbonized Dinner Party. The shape and texture used on her vessels are meant to create a more engaging eating experience, and overall reduce food waste through this tactility.

Debris

Midori Hongo

MFA Industrial Design

Weronika Banas

MFA Industrial Design

Nifemi Ogunro

MFA Industrial Design

Set in 2097, Debris is a speculative resturant experience where waste is presented as a meal. Designed by Midori Hongo, Weronika Banas, and Nifemi Ogunro, this meal of the future allows its participants to digest waste by taking an enzyme pill.

Future Alliances

Jessica Thies

MFA Industrial Design

Future Alliances by Jessica Thies is designed to reframe our relationships with other organisms and our role as waste producers. The work is an exploration with living materials, repositioning humans as a part of nature, and considering the full cycles of materials through growth and decomposition.

To understand further how to collaborate with organisms for future foods, to make new materials and objects, and to decompose organic matter, she looks to nature.

For recipe details, please see page 110.

The Glass Melangerie

Perri Eppie

MFA Interior Design

The Glass Melangerie by Perri Eppie advocates for circularity and healthier building materials. She aimed to develop a less carbon intensive concrete, uses glass pozzolan to partially replace the cement, oyster shells as concrete aggregate to replace mined stone aggregate, and found bricks from New York City construction sites. Utilizing only local materials, she also sourced post-consumer wine bottles which were reformed into new materials. Perri questions the concept of waste, analyzes the life cycle of products, and reduces her reliance on virgin materials.

For recipe details, please see page 111.

I Lied to Myself, This Is Not About Maize

Elisa Lutteral

MFA Textiles

Elisa Lutteral’s work I Lied to Myself, This Is Not About Maize is a large scale textile knit, which knits in corn husk and corn seeds by hand.

For recipe details, please see page 111.

Khakshir

Re-connect Candleholder

Sadaf Farahanifar

MFA Industrial Design

Sadaf Farahanifar’s work asks us to change our behavior with the objects around us and turn away from consumerism. Khakshir is made from the flixweed seeds of the herb Descurainia Sophia, an ingredient within Persian drinks. Flixweed seeds are a part of Sadaf’s daily ritual, and she reuses the oil from these seeds to create a new bioplastic material.

Her Re-Connect Candleholder highlights the organic beauty within our foods which we take for granted, repurposing them into new lives.

For recipe details, please see pages 112 and 114.

Kulhad Drishti

Jaggi

MFA Textiles

Kulhad by Drishti Jaggi speaks to the Indian tradition of Chai (tea). Chai sheds weariness by offering energy and freshness and is part of daily routine and culture in India. Often served in locally made clay cups by Indian artisans, Drishti upcycles tea leaves from her daily ritual into a new biomaterial.

She also creates a Rangoli from colorful food waste. Traditionally, Rangoli is an art of decoration drawn on the floor with rice flour in the entrances in homes. It is thought to bring good luck, prosperity on the house and in the family, and to welcome guests. Some mothers in India do this activity every morning or on a special festive occasions like Diwali, Onam, and Pongal.

For recipe details, please see page 112.

Making Food Make Place

Sam Tong

MFA Interior Design

Sam Tong’s thesis work, Making Food Make Place: Preservation of Cultural Identity, Self-Orientalism as Resistance & Decoloniality through Food in Manhattan’s Chinatown, is a reflection on how COVID-19 has affected Chinese-owned businesses in New York City.

To uphold livelihoods, preserve identity, and cultural memories through food, she asks how cultural practices and cooking our ancestors’ recipes can be used as an act of protest to resist colonalities of power.

Sam aims to unite people through design, sustainability, and cuisine, and to reduce the amount of food which is currently wasted. In turn, she creates a communal kitchen, a participatory and celebratory experience for diverse groups to find a sense of belonging.

Paseo de Olla

Lina Celis Rengifo MFA Textiles

Lina Celis Rengifo designed Paseo de Olla to reconnect with her identity. The hanging textile piece is made from food waste ingredients of “sancocho,” natural dyeing, crochet, patching, basketry, and felting. The form symbolizes a traditional Colombian pot used to make this dish, a local soup made by the river, and collectively uses each ingredient of the recipe to tell her family story.

Lina collected her own food waste daily in New York, based on her diet which is connected to her Colombian roots and memories. Her textile displays the identity of her community, food which could be served in her grounded containers, biodegradable bowls which come from the soil. For recipe details, please see page 113.

Receita Se Vire: A Recipe to Turn Around

Yasmina Huckins

MFA Interior Design

Eduardo Castro

Chef Collaborator

Yasmina Huckins collaborated with Chef Eduardo Castro to create Receita Se Vire, a feijoada recipe which was served during the Decolonized and Decarbonized Dinner Party. This traditional Brazilian bean stew was originally made by enslaved people as a response to colonization. The dish utilizes methods of reuse, including what is available to the maker—whether that is very plentiful or very little. The dish can be seen to represent decolonization. From our exhibit, the onion peels, citrus peels, and black bean water waste were then reused as natural dyes as a part of Yasmina’s Interior Design thesis. Altogether this project serves as a conversation for reuse, reclamation, and knowledge sharing.

For recipe details, please see page 113.

Textures Small and Large Vase, Center Piece Compost Bowl

Dana D’Amico Professor, Product Design

Dana D’Amico’s workshop was inspired by her realization that soiled pizza boxes weren’t recyclable. Based on this workshop, she designed a compost bin and floral centerpieces reusing the material from used pizza boxes for the Decolonized and Decarbonized Dinner Party.

Dinner Party Exhibition

Bethany Camarati

Chenyi Jhon

Colleigh Stein

Dajia Dominguez

Dana D’Amico

Dhwani Jhunjhunwala

Drishti Jaggi

Eduardo Castro

Elisa Lutteral

Femi Nathan-Marsh

Ian Adler

Jessica Thies

Jia Wei Samantha Tong

Jonsara Ruth

Layla Nathanael Klinger Nowak

Lin Yee Yuan

Lina Celis Rengifo

Lydia Yekalamlari

Madina Masimova

Maria Jose Canon Henao

Megan Ha

Michele Gorman

Midori Hongo

Mike Renzy

Nifemi Ogunro

Paula Rodriguez

Perri Eppie

Preeti Gopinath

Priscila Song

Ross McBee

Sadaf Farahanifar

Sam Bennett

Tanya Sanjay Puri

Uyen Tran

Vidushi Tekriwal

Yasmina Huckins

Yu Nong Khew

Yvette Chaparro

Decolonized & Decarbonized Dinner Party table setting and community gathering, Earth Day 2022

Top: Dinner Party participants explore Elisa Lutteral’s material research while enjoying feijoada. Bottom: Madina Masimova and Paula Rodriguez discuss Lina Celis Rengifo’s Paseo de Olla

Top: Chef Castro serves feijoada to the Dinner Party community in front of Sam Tong’s Making Food Make Place. Bottom: Perri Eppie and Gus Gustafson discuss her discarded oyster shells plate.

Lina Celis Rengifo

Perri Eppie

Drishti Jaggi

Drishti Jaggi

Lina Celis Rengifo

D’Amico

Dana

Sadaf Farahanifar

Drishti Jaggi

Jess Thies

Madina Masimova + Paula Rodriguez

Elisa Lutteral

Maria Jose Canon Henao

Elisa Lutteral

Elisa Lutteral

Perri Eppie

Lina Celis Rengifo

Jess Thies

Perri Eppie

Midori Hongo

Midori Hongo, Weronika Banas, Nifemi Ogunro

Midori Hongo, Weronika Banas, Nifemi Ogunro

Midori Hongo, Weronika Banas, Nifemi Ogunro

Resources

Making Resources

Materiom

Reference Recipes

Coffee

Onion skin natural dye

Agar bioplastic

Eggshell

Mussel shells

Orange Peel

Oyster shells

Grow Bio Mycelium Kits

Future Materials Bank

ChemArts Cookbook

Decoloniality & Decarbonizing Resources

This is Mold

Chinese Protest Recipes

Material ConneXion

Institute of Making

Research Collective for Decolonizing Fashion

Slow Factory

Design Justice

Equity-Centered Community Design

Braiding Sweetgrass

Sweetwater Foundation

Decoloniality & Decarbonizing Resources (continued)

Co-Design

GrowNYC

Sustainable Development Goals

Earth Matter—NYC Compost Project

Groundcycle

What Design Can Do

Ellen MacArthur Foundation

NYC Department of Sanitation

Community Composting

Earth Repair

Billion Oyster Project

Food Waste Resource Map

by Sadaf Farahanifar

Center for Zero Waste Design

Softening Cultures

by Emma Leigh Macdonald and Ben Goldner

Decarbonize Design

Climate Justice Alliance

Civic Lab for Environmental Justice

National Resource Defense Council

Decoloniality & Decarbonizing Resources (continued)

Love Food Hate Waste

Protest Kitchen

Silo: The Zero Waste Blueprint

Dana Gunders. “Wasted: How America is Losing Up to 40 Percent of Its Food from Farm to Fork to Landfill.” Natural Resources Defense Council, 2017

FDA, Food Loss and Waste

Construction and Demolition Waste Manual

Economic Research Service. “Energy Use in the US Food System.” USDA, March 2010.

Food and Agriculture Organizations of the United Nations

Material District

IDSA Decolonizing Industrial Design

Pollution is Colonialism

Air Pearls

Midori Hongo

MFA Industrial Design

Ingredients

Agar Agar

Protein

Water

Process

Step 1: Mix two parts agar agar to one part each of protein and water (2:1:1).

Step 2: Pour the mixture into a mold; remove after 1 hour, and fully dry until the next day.

BioLight Peels

Madina Masimova and Paula Rodriguez

MFA Interior Design

Tools

Stove/Hotplate

Measuring cup

Cooking pot

Scale

Stirring spoon Mold

Blender

Ingredients, Bio Banana Light Peels

Banana peels, 800 g

Water, 500 g

Paper waste, 100 g

Glycerol, 50 g

Ingredients, Bio Orange Light Peels

Orange peels, 200 g

Water, 200 g

Glycerol, 50 g

Gelatin, 30 g

Process, Bio Banana Light Peels

Step 1: Air dry your banana peels for 2-3 days. Pour water into a blender, add the banana peels and recycled paper.

Step 2: Pour the mix into a pot and then stir over medium to low heat. Once the mix becomes a solution, add the glycerol and mix well.

Step 3: Take the pot off the heat and pour mixture into a mold. Leave it to dry for 5-6 days. Once dried, remove it

from the mold and place is as a decorative surface for your lamps, walls, or dining table!

Process, Bio Orange Light Peels

Step 1: Air dry orange peels for 3-5 days and then blend them. Pour water into the pot and add the gelatin. Mix well and then stir over medium to low heat.

Step 2: Once the gelatin and water become a solution, add the glycerol and mix well. Then add your orange peels and mix well.

Step 3: Take the pot off the heat and pour mixture into a mold. Leave it to dry for 3-5 days. Once dry, remove it from the mold and place is as a decorative surface for your lamps, walls, or dining table!

Biomaterials with Corn

Husks

Elisa Lutteral

MFA Textiles

Tools

Stove and oven

Teaspoon

Measuring cup

Cooking pot

Ingredients

Agar Agar, 2 gm

Vegetable glycerin, 1.5 ml

Water, 210 ml

Stirring spoon Mold

Measuring Syringe

Corn husks (ground), 1 teaspoon

Process

Step 1: Collect corn husks in local supermarket or market.

Step 2: Dry the corn husks in the oven after cooking your meal or while the oven is preheating.

Step 3: Grind the corn husks.

Step 4: Place all the ingredients in a pot.

Step 5: Stir gently.

Step 6: Place the mixture in the mold.

BIOskin

Elisa Lutteral

MFA Textiles

Ingredients

Agar Agar, 2 gm

Vegetable glycerin, 1.5 ml

Water, 210 ml

Orange peels (dried and ground), 1 teaspoon

Cotton yarn

Linen yarn

Silk thread

Process

Step 1: Collect orange peels from domestic waste.

Step 2: Dry the orange peels in the oven after cooking your meal or while the oven is preheating

Step 3: Grind the orange peels.

Step 4: Place all the ingredients in a pot.

Step 5: Stir gently.

Step 6: Place the mixture in the mold.

Step 7: Let dry and sew into mask design.

Future Alliances

Jessica Thies

MFA Industrial Design

Ingredients

Grow.Bio Mycelium Kit

Oyster mushrooms

Coffee grounds

Process

Agricultural waste SCOBY starter

Chlorella algae

Step 1: Research and understand the living materials you are working with. While they can be used to grow new foods, objects and materials, consider their own perspective throughout the making process.

Step 2: Wear gloves and sterilize equipment/working space with isopropyl alcohol. Create mold using leftover cardboard.

Step 3: Place mycelium and growing substrates, like coffee grounds, into mold. Allow to grow for 10 days in a temperature/light appropriate location.

Step 4: Allow mycelium to dehydrate on the windowsill, allowing them to be able to be rehydrated and continue

growth in the future.

Step 5: Place SCOBY in a glass fermentation vessel with substrates, traditionally leftover tea bags and sugar, and allow it to grow until desired thickness.

Step 6: Place algae on windowsill to capture carbon with photosynthesis.

Step 7: Decorate dining table with mycelium candle holders!

The Glass Melangerie

Perri Eppie

MFA Interior Design

Ingredients

Glass wine bottles (crushed or cut)

Glass pozzolan to partially replace cement (the CO2-heavy element of concrete)

Oyster shells as concrete aggregate to replace mined stone aggregate

Found bricks from New York City construction sites

Elisa Lutteral

MFA Textiles

Ingredients

Linen yarn

Corn husks

Corn seeds

Process

Step 1: Collect corn husks in local supermarket or market.

Step 2: Knit!

I Lied to Myself, This Is Not About Maize

Khakshir

Sadaf Farahanifar

MFA Industrial Design

Ingredients

Flixweed

Gelatin Additives

Process

Step 1: Boil flixweed seed with water.

Step 2: Drain seeds.

Step 3: Grind seeds.

Step 4: Heat seeds on a stove while mixing with gelatin and additives.

Step 5: Pour and cool the mixture.

Step 6: Allow it to dry.

Kulhad

Drishti Jaggi

MFA Textiles

Ingredients

Wheat Water

Tea powder

Process

Step 1: Collect filtered tea powder.

Step 2: Mix together all ingredients to create a dough.

Step 3: Form the dough.

Step 4: Shape small pieces of the dough into round balls.

Step 5: Use a roller to flatten the dough.

Step 6: Mold the design of the flattened dough into desired pattern or shape.

Paseo de Olla

Lina Celis Rengifo

MFA Textiles

Ingredients

Banana peels

Onion skins

Plantain leaves

Corn husks

Recycled paper

Process

Coffee grounds

Fique fibers

Agar Agar

Cornstarch

Glycerin

Step 1: Recollect raw material at surrounding supermarkets and from waste such as banana peels, onion skins, corn husks, and recycled paper.

Step 2: Prepare materials to be used in basketry and crochet by cutting plantain leaves and corn husk.

Step 3: Crochet by joining corn husks strips to shape flowers and join plantain leaves to make a bowl shape.

Step 4: Dye a used white cotton t-shirt with onion skins to finally add a ph modifier into the water (iron sulfate).

Step 5: Crochet with t-shirt strips to be joined with recollected tree branches.

Step 6: Join every piece to shape a hanging container.

Step 7: Recollect coffee bag and unravel them to obtain the natural fiber.

Step 8: Mix coffee grounds, recycled brown paper, and felted fique fiber with cornstarch and glycerine.

Step 9: Shape the bioceramic with preexisting bowls and let them dry one week.

Step 10: Serve the dish!

Receita Se Vire:

A Recipe to Turn Around

Yasmina

Huckins and Eduardo Castro

MFA Interior Design, Chef Collaborator

Tools

Two large pots

Heat source

Chopping utensils and surfaces

Water source

Orange Peels

Ingredients, Feijoada

Orange, to taste

Lime, to taste

Yellow onion, 7 large

Black beans, 3 lbs

Garlic, 1 head

Pork (bacon, feet, ear, tail, sausage), 9 lbs

Process, Natural Dyes

Cilantro, 2 bunches

Cumin, ½ cup

Bay leaves, 10 leaves

Cayenne, to taste

Salt, to taste

White vinegar, ½ cup

Black pepper, to taste

Peel onions and citrus, set aside scraps. Soak black beans in water overnight, strain, and save the water. Boil onion skins in a pot for one hour. Do the same, in a separate pot, for the citrus and peels. The black bean water does not need to be boiled, it is ready.

Soak fabrics in the resulting liquids for at least one hour to create natural dyes.

Re-Connect Candleholder

Sadaf Farahanifar

MFA Industrial Design

Ingredients

Vegetables

Biodegradable tape

Beeswax candles

Contributors

Antonia Craig is a natural leader who values ethical and inclusive management practices with over fifteen years of experience in higher education. She is the assistant dean of Strategic Academic Planning at Parsons School of Design, previously working in Curriculum and Learning and Course Planning. Antonia prioritizes fostering close working relationships that go beyond the day-to-day business of policy and process and recognizes the value of individual experience and contribution as essential to any community.

Ben Barry is dean and visiting associate professor of Equity and Inclusion at Parsons’ School of Fashion. He is currently the principal investigator of Crippling Masculinity, a research project that explores how disabled, deaf, and mad-identified men and masculine people navigate the world and make new worlds through fashion. He has published in Fashion Theory, Textile, Gender & Society, Fat Studies, Harvard Business Review and the Business of Fashion, among other outlets.

Bethany Camarati is an experienced designer with a background in production development and a demonstrated history of working in the apparel and fashion industry. As a strong operations professional, she is currently an Associate Director of Operations at Parsons School of Design. She has a Master of Arts focused in Fashion Studies from Parsons School of Design.

New York City-based industrial designer, consultant, and educator Dana D’Amico creates work that evokes effortless simplicity. Blending urban elements with influences from nature, Dana’s modern, refined style comes from a respect for both material and form. Working hands-on with the factories that produce her designs, she travels the world and is involved in all aspects of product development. Dana shares her approach through global education, promoting cultural immersion, tactile learning and sustainable practices.

David J. Lewis is the Dean of The School of Constructed Environments, Professor of Architecture, and a founding principal of LTL Architects (Lewis.Tsurumaki.Lewis), a

design intensive architecture firm located in New York City. At Parsons he has served as Director of the Master of Architecture program, the Director of Design Workshop program, and on the faculty since 2002. He leads courses on the intersection of architectural representation, material practices, and history.

Drishti Jaggi is an MFA Textiles Design student at Parsons School of Design.

Eduardo Castro is a chef living and working in Brooklyn, New York. Eduardo moved to New York from Recife, Brazil in 2016, and has since been involved in many notable New York restaurants including Mas Farmhouse, Flora, and souschef de cuisine at LaLou. Outside of the kitchen, Eduardo is involved in the practice and teaching of capoeira dance and music.

Elisa Lutteral holds a BFA from the University of Buenos Aires. She is currently doing an MFA in Textiles at Parsons School of Design. Her practice is focused on material culture studies and traceability through the guided process of making. She has an ongoing project researching the biography of corn through the American continent through a series of collaborative practices with other multidisciplinary creatives.

Jessica Thies is a designer with a focus on materials innovation, and is currently studying on the MFA Industrial Design course at Parsons School of Design. She works as a research assistant at the Parsons Healthy Materials Lab and is a member at Genspace. Previously, she studied on the Material Futures course at Central Saint Martins, worked for over three years as a designer and project manager for Lori Weitzner, and has a B.S. in Textile Design from Jefferson.

Jonsara Ruth is a design agitator for healthier futures. She is co-founder and Design Director of Healthy Materials Lab at Parsons School of Design, where she is Associate Professor and Founding Director of the MFA Interior Design program.

Central to her research is convening diverse perspectives to study human experience, behavior, health, equity, and sustainable principles as primary motivations for design. As a designer and artist, Jonsara founded Salty Labs, a collaborative studio established to utilize design to improve human and environmental health. With design research, she has led creative and production teams to mass-produce the first certified healthy and environmentally friendly children’s furniture available in America.

Julia van den Hout is an architecture and design writer, editor, and curator. She is the principal of Original Copy and Architecture Curator/ Program Director at Art Omi. Prior to founding Original Copy, she was the Press Director at Steven Holl Architects, and she was a founding editor of CLOG. She teaches at Pratt Institute’s Graduate School of Architecture and is a member of the Exhibitions Committee at the Center for Architecture/AIA NY.

Layla Nathanael Klinger Nowak is a hole maker, working with fiber, light, and electric currents to investigate intimacy, erotic compulsions, and unstable geographies. She created sitespecific installations for the Little Islands Festival (Sikinos, Greece), New York Public Library (New York City), FRATZ Festival (Berlin), and Nightlight Festival (Tel Aviv), and has exhibited across the United States and Tel Aviv. They received their MFA in Textiles from Parsons School of Design, where they are currently an adjunct faculty member.

As a Colombian architect and designer, Lina Celis Rengifo is convinced art, as an expression of human creativity, can create a meaningful existence, which as a mediator can solve the challenges of today’s global agenda. Taking into account an environmental crisis in combination with inequality and segregation in vulnerable countries, Lina’s practice has been led to affect positively our way of inhabiting through a concept of “living consciously” where ancestral practices and technological knowledge are entangled together to hold life harmoniously.

LinYee Yuan is the founder and editor of MOLD, which explores how designers can address the coming food crisis by creating products and systems that will help feed 9 billion people by the year 2050. LinYee was previously the entrepreneur in residence for QZ.com and an editor for Core77, T: The New York Times Style Magazine and Theme

Magazine. She has written about design and art for Food52, Design Observer, Cool Hunting, Elle Decor and Wilder Quarterly.

MacKenna Lewis is a Brooklyn-based photographer whose documentary work explores themes of community, coming of age, and human connection. MacKenna graduated from the International Center of Photography’s Documentary Practice and Visual Journalism program in 2021, and she was a member of the Eddie Adams Workshop class of XXXIV.

Madina Masimova is a spatial designer, creating and designing spaces and environments in the conjunction of science, technology, and art. She is in the MFA Interior & Lighting Design program at Parsons School of Design, where she challenges and questions spatialenvironments, including the Metaverse and outer space. Inspired by the ubiquity of space, she investigates it from the perspective of social and climate justice.

Maria Jose Canon Henao is a designer, writer, and artist. She is a BFA Product Design student at Parsons School of Design.

Martin Seck is a visual artist, freelance commercial photographer, and educator based in New York City. He has completed numerous editorial, portrait, product design, and architectural photography projects for clients such as the MoMA, The New School, Pentagram Design, the Prospect Park Alliance, and Etsy.

Michele Gorman is the director of the MFA Interior Design Program and assistant professor of Interiors, Objects, and Technologies in the School of Constructed Environments. Michele has designed and built a number of award-winning objects, exhibitions, and spaces and is a co-founder of “The Radically Inclusive Studio” with colleagues in South Africa and Australia. She has collaborated with interdisciplinary colleagues and students in Parsons to launch the Decolonized & Decarbonized Dinner Party Talks + Workshops in 2022. Michele is committed to addressing social and environmental justice within the profession and academy.

Midori Hongo is a graphic/product designer and idealistic realist with dreams. Her work visualizes the potential of lifecentered design, humanity, culture, senses and sustainability through a detail-oriented process. In doing so, she aims to

create digital and physical products that introduce innovation and positivity in the world.

Mike Rezny is the assistant director of Green Space at GrowNYC. Mike has overseen the construction of more than ninety community gardens over the last ten years, as well as the creation of the one-acre Governors Island Teaching Garden, a demonstration farm at JFK Airport, and numerous gardens in public housing developments.

As a Nigerian American designer, Nifemi Ogunro bridges the gap between design, social issues, and sustainability. Nifemi uses photography and performance as a way to articulate this work.

Paula Rodriguez is a Colombian designer passionate about sustainability and positive design. She is specialized in design thinking and human-centered design with an emphasis on product and design of experiences. She is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Interior Design at Parsons School of Design.

Hailing from the Tristate Area, Perri Eppie has always been interested in circular systems and good design. With nearly a decade of experience in big-budget TV production and development, Perri’s passion for storytelling has since evolved to the world off-screen. As an Interior Designer in New York City, she challenges our urban priorities and how they impact our planet. Focused on the health of building materials and inspired by nature’s method of recycling, Perri advocates for circularity through her design practice and material innovations.

Preeti Gopinath is Associate Professor in the School of Fashion and founding Director of the Textiles MFA program at Parsons, The New School, in New York. A graduate of the National Institute of Design (India), Preeti is an internationally experienced textile designer, CAD expert and an acclaimed educator with over 25 years of international experience in both industry and the classroom. Preeti works closely with her talented faculty team to mentor students in the groundbreaking Textiles MFA program at Parsons, where students combine artistry and craft with technology to develop hybrid textiles including bioplastics, that authentically address issues of sustainability, climate change, injustices

around migration, and the preservation of traditional crafts.

Ross McBee is a co-founder and CSO of TômTex. He received a PhD from Columbia University under Harris Wang, working on the microbiome, synthetic genomics, and living materials. Ross also works as a freelance biology and engineering consultant.

Sadaf Farahanifar is an industrial designer with a practice based in New York City. Her work focuses on cultural perspectives and behavioral aspects.

Sam Bennett is an ethnographer, maker, and designer whose research is focused on consumerism, accumulation, and repair of objects in the domestic space and in the waste stream. She co-runs Repair Shop, which explores the line between object-based mending practices and other modes of “making do.” She also runs Clever/Slice, a space for creatives to share in-progress work, while dismantling the classic critique. She teaches at Parsons School of Design, Pratt Institute, and New Jersey Institute of Technology.

Samantha Tong is a designer, photographer, and educator focused on developing interiors, environments, and graphics. Born in Hong Kong, Samantha is currently living and working as a graphic designer at an architecture firm in New York.

Uyen Tran is a designer and materials researcher originally from Vietnam, an alumn of Parsons School of Design, and on Forbes 30 under 30 Asia. She is now based in New York and aims to establish a viable and complete system of biodegradable material products. Uyen is the Founder, and CEO of TômTex, a material science company building sustainable and high-performance material for the future using repurposed shrimp and mushroom waste.

Weronika Vera Banas combines creativity and science to develop clean technologies and innovative solutions for the Design and Fashion Industries. She works on the intersection of disciplines to create responsible products and systems.

Yasmina Huckins is a Lebanese-American interior designer living and working in Brooklyn. Yasmina graduated from Pratt Institute with a BFA in Painting, and recently from Parsons’ MFA Interior Design program, where she also co-taught an undergraduate architectural theory course. She has been

working on residential design projects while also maintaining an independent artistic practice that reflects her passion for social justice and equitable design.

Yu Nong Khew is an assistant professor at Parsons School of Design’s School of Constructed Environments, and is a co-founder of Cyklr Inc., a clean tech company focused on building systems supporting urban composting. She also serves as a design partner at Studio Khew + Cornelius and has taught at Columbia University GSAPP and Singapore University of Technology and Design, in collaboration with MIT and the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCIArc). Yu Nong has worked with the award-winning design practice of Zaha Hadid Architecture and served as project director at Asymptote Architecture.

Yvette Chaparro is the director of the MFA Industrial Design program and assistant professor of Product and Industrial Design, in the Parsons School of Constructed Environments. She is a practicing industrial designer at Yvette Chaparro Studio, and is currently a PhD Candidate at Transart and Liverpool John Moores University.

Yvonne Watson is an educator, designer, and academic who currently serves as dean of Curriculum and Learning and special advisor to the Provost Office on Curriculum at Parsons School of Design, and is an associate professor in the School of Fashion. Since 2018, Yvonne has served as Parsons’ associate dean of Curriculum and Learning. Yvonne’s career has spanned roles that have encompassed both undergraduate and graduate studies as the Parsons School of Fashion director of Academic Affairs and School associate dean, and program director for BA Fashion Knitwear Design, MA Textile Design and Innovation, and MA Decorative Arts at Nottingham Trent University.

Program Overview

The MFA Industrial Design program prepares students to negotiate the seemingly contradictory forces at play in the growing product design industry. They explore the way goods can be produced in both localized contexts (a “making in place” approach, which relies on regionalized needs and constraints) and globalized contexts (employing design principles focusing on universal needs). Students combine advanced making skills with critical inquiry and hone their skills using Parsons’ state-of-the-art product prototyping and testing facilities.

The MFA Interior Design program at Parsons is uniquely positioned to lead the discourse and practice of interior design in the 21st century. Inaugurated in 2009 at Parsons, the school where formal interior design education began, this graduate program builds on more than 100 years of leadership in the field. Design as a social practice is the program’s guiding philosophy. Students explore design as a force for change, a means of environmental stewardship, and a tool for shaping experiences.

The MFA Textiles program at Parsons is a community of makers, designers, and scholars exploring and creating textiles—from locally crafted materials to 3D knitted matter to hand-embellished fabrics—and introducing innovation in textile-based industries and theory. Students investigate these dynamics, dissolving the boundaries between technology and craft. In the process, they prepare for the growing array of creative and professional opportunities related to textiles in fashion design, product design, interior design, textiles research, set design, fine arts, architecture, and hybrid fields.

Acknowledgments

We are grateful for the extended contributions to this book, which effectively reflect our collaboration. The impact of the whole has proven to be greater than the sum of the individual participants, and we hope this will inspire more students to courageously address climate justice, together as a community.

We feel empowered and thankful to be part of this incredible interdisciplinary community at Parsons.

We thank all of the students, staff, faculty, and guests who participated and guided workshops in March, namely, Uyen Tran and Ross McBee of Tômtex, Linyee Yuan, Jonsara Ruth, Mike Rezny from GrowNYC, Sam Tong, Sam Bennett, Yu Nong Khew, Dana D’Amico, and Layla Nathanael Klinger Nowak. Thank you to Sadaf Farahanifar and Jess Thies for your work as Research Assistants to this project. The wonderful photography is by Martin Seck.

And we thank Parsons School of Design’s School of Constructed Environments, the School of Fashion, the SCE Curriculum Funds, and Parsons Cross-School Funds that supported the launching of the workshops, the Dinner Party, and this book.

Image Credits

Bottom: Yasmina Huckins and Eduardo Castro

61 MacKenna Lewis

62–63 MacKenna Lewis

65 MacKenna Lewis

66-67 MacKenna Lewis

68–69 MacKenna Lewis

70–99 Martin Seck

100–101 MacKenna Lewis

115 MacKenna Lewis

Bottom

The Decolonized & Decarbonized Dinner Party is an interdisciplinary exhibition and performative event asking big questions on socially just approaches to the future of eating within our climate crisis.

Bringing attention to the impact that global warming has on our New York Citycommunities, the contributions to the Dinner Party use decarbonizing practices within our local food economies.