TAPAS - Spanish Design for Food: Food

The exhibition sets out to show how design and food have always been interrelated and how the discipline of design has sought solutions to the problems posed by the world of cuisine. In particular, it takes a look at how Spanish culture has come up with ingenious inventions and solutions in this respect throughout its history.

Spain was the first country to import cocoa from the Americas to make chocolate, and from here it spread to the rest of Europe. It became popular in the 17th century and it was drunk hot and sweet. It was only with the coming of industrialization in the early 19th century that it was produced in solid form.

To accompany the chocolate it is usual to provide slices of sweet bread, biscuit or churros. The churro is a product which is highly typical of Spain, although it exists in several other countries. It is a deep-fried doughy confection which is extruded from a star-shaped nozzle, giving it a characteristic striated shape which improves frying.

The paellera, or simply paella (from the Latin patella, cooking vessel) is a special skillet for cooking the dish known as paella, which consists of rice simmered with a variety of ingredients.

It originated in the Albufera district of Valencia, but it has become a typically Spanish dish known all over the world. Their diameter is usually very large in proportion to their depth in order to optimize cooking, and they have a handle at either side to facilitate lifting.

This popular Spanish candy was invented in 1958 by the businessman Enric Bernat so that children could suck it without getting sticky.

The logo is the work of Salvador Dalí, and about twelve million of them are sold all over the world every day. An example forms part of the permanent collection of the MoMA in New York. Since 2006 the brand has belonged to the Italian group Perfetti Van Melle.

Why do all chocolate bars have to be the same? Chocodosis is a tablet of chocolate with a unique shape that invites you to play, alone or in company, dosing out the ideal portion for each occasion.

The people at Compeixalaigua took part in a workshop organized by Surtido with Chocolat Factory. From it there emerged a bonbon in the shape of a Nespresso capsule or one of those thimbles in different flavors. You treat yourself, just like a kid, to suck your fingers and stain your clothes as you please.

This collection of lamps was shown in 2012 at the Dishculptur exhibition in the Espai EatArt gallery in Banyoles (Girona). It consists of a stainless steel structure which supports a suitably-protected loaf of bread. Every one is unique and made by hand.

Made in an industrial bread oven, the Panpaati project investigates the creation of tables and chairs out of bread dough, adhering to a metal structure. An edible, ephemeral construction made in 2008.

Reyes Mora designed this bread, which served as an edible container for an egg in the workshop "El pan nuestro de cada día" (Our Daily Bread). It was organized by Héctor Serrano at the Cardenal Herrera university in Valencia in 2009.

How to faithfully reproduce the contents of a plate? That was the question. While an industrial design can be reproduced on the basis of molds, a dish forming part of a meal has to be made over and over again by hand. At El Bulli, to ensure that the compositions on the plate were always the same, the plate’s contents were modeled in plasticine in different shapes and colors.

The name of the dish was noted on a ticket and in this way models were made that the cook could use to reproduce them by copying the size of the portions and their position on the plate. The photo shows a dish called semillas with its model in plasticine.

Three-dimensional olive tapas, in the shape of atomic models. Cover of the book 1:1 Martí Guixé, published by 010.