Pop-up food design research: A mobile university lab to explore situated knowledge and foster creativity about food

The paper reflects on the significance of conducting food design research via situated collaborative workshops to trigger widespread food-related knowledge and creativity exchanges. The article presents the case of the Polito Food Design Lab from Politecnico di Torino (IT). Since 2016, the laboratory has fostered action-research projects on food design topics. Consistent with the vision of Politecnico di Torino as an engaged university, it was conceived to promote multidisciplinary interaction with food and direct experimentation with its transformations, according to a circular economy, social justice perspective, and community approach. The Polito Food Design Lab was designed as a “pop-up” or “mobile” laboratory. The equipment for experimenting with food transformation processes has been organized in transportable kits, which can be set up inside the university and in urban spaces to activate communities' wealth of gastro-creative knowledge and sensibilities. It has become one of the lab's most distinctive and stimulating attributes, delivering significant results from the point of view of engaged research, not formal teaching, and promoting the civic role of universities. Thus, the situated and participating dimension of mobile labs appears to be an essential part of food design researchers’ practice to better understand - and teach - food-related phenomena in their factual dimension, to enhance the social and cultural capital of contexts, and to concretize the relational dimension of design processes.