Hello~ This is Jinming!
I studied at Beijing Jiaotong University from 2016 to 2020 as an undergraduate, and my major is environmental art design. I had an internship at the China Academy of Building Research to do a culture center project...
OMG! This introduction is really too old-fashioned, this is not my style.
So let's find out who I am and what I am doing now!
Raise a Toast is a design for a flagship store for the young craft beer brand - Toast Ale. Their beers are all produced from waste bread as a response to the monumental quantities of bread that is wasted daily. Toast show that doing good can be fun. By creating beer from what is discarded Toast have saved over 2 million slices of bread and at the same time donated profits to charity, allowing people to have fun and make a positive impact. Toast's core philosophy 'A Beer with More Taste. A World without Waste.' was very inspiring for me and provided the driving ethos behind my project. It led me to create a project that is bold in visual flavour, playful and of course reduces waste.
As waste bread is the heart of Toast Ale I put it at the heart of my design, I explored how bread could be used as building material. Through a series of material tests, I found it is easy to cast into different forms and takes colours well. I can achieve different textures with different ingredients. And another thing I learned is that it is not stable, cracking and warping as it cures, so I experimented with adding fibre reinforcement to make it behave more predictably. To keep them from going mouldy I also air-dried and sealed them. Using my bread based composite, I explored where this could be applied in the space. The main area is a 'bread-block' feature wall on the ground floor that tells the story of Toast Ale.
Our site, Coal Drops Yard, is a really popular and fashionable place connected to retail and dining, making it the perfect location for Toast Ale's flagship store. Within the arches, I split the store over three levels. The ground floor and then two underground floors. The top floor is an exhibition space that tells the story of Toast. The first basement has a bar and a small bakery counter. People can enjoy the beer with bread. The lower basement is toilets, services and storage.
I hope more people will pay attention to the crazy food waste in daily life through my design and Toast Ale. Not just waste bread, but also more categories of food waste requires everyone's strength!
