Wood Sticks - Uchi dish design by Miguel Ruiz at Coroflot.com

Wood Sticks - Uchi dish design

Wood Sticks - Uchi dish design from Miguel Ruiz

Wood Sticks - Uchi dish design

Sponsored group project were were asked to re-imagine the relationship between serving vessel, food and the user.

The dish forms your utensil. Using an abstracted form of a utensil, Wood Sticks focuses on the oriental collectivist notion of sharing.

Designed by Miguel Ruiz and Bruno Horota Horioka, in collaboration with Uchi Houston and Blaffer Art Museum.

Featured in Houston’s Uchi restaurant to offer the caviar tasting.

Featured at the 2013 Texas Contemporary Art Fair.

Featured on Houston Culture Map.

http://www.houstonpress.com/restaurants/uchi-collaborates-with-university-of-houston-design-students-to-create-a-work-of-art-6432259

http://houston.culturemap.com/news/entertainment/10-12-13-a-giant-bigfoot-a-mini-laundromat-and-a-crazy-rooftop-this-texas-art-fair-has-it-all/slideshow

http://tcsfurniture.com/
http://www.clarkshardwood.com/

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Seeking inspiration

Culinary art by Phillip Spear featured at Houston's Uchi Contemporary Japanese dining & sushi restaurant.

The concept was based on the oriental collectivist notion of sharing and was imagined to provide it's own utensils where they would become part of the dish. Birch wood is was the material we chose in order to exemplify a contemporary rustic aesthetic. The birch wood for our project was donated Clark's Hardwood Lumber Co. http://www.clarkshardwood.com/

First model. Testing the concept.

Early rendition. Dimensional drawing by Bruno Horioka.

2nd Model. Testing the concept

Dimensional drawing by Bruno Horioka. to enforce the concept of sharing between two people, we decided to reduce the concave extrusions to just one centered on the dish.

The flat base that connects the two halves of the dish was laser cut to shape.

Proof of principal. CNC routed foam model.

3D Rendering by Bruno Horioka.

Ronnie Parrish from Town and Country Sales Furniture also donated valuable time to manufacturing the parts for us with his company's CNC router. Once the parts were gathered from the CNC router, we began the manual process of smoothing down all profiles. Check out: Town and Country Sales Furniture. http://tcsfurniture.com/

Although the parts were milled, laser cut, and then glued together, the smoothing down of profiles had to be done with belt sanders, files, and sanding blocks. Here, we were sanding the bowl section with a wooden egg.