Le Zhang

Le Zhang is an interdisciplinary designer & researcher based in London. Her creative footprint covers design investigate, design anthropology and publication.

With the background of Innovation Design & Design Products, her creation focusing on reflect the context of artefact. Especially from the perspective of regional context of food which regards food as a media to see through the crossbreed culture under globalization. From 2021, she began to integrate the methodology of design anthropology, including the research on food, landscape, localization and material culture.

I believe that designer has both capacity of realizing projects and generate knowledge, carrying the role of translation between tangible material and intangible information. With the unique and creative insight into the world, design has its power to investigate into reality, providing speculation, reflection and academic progress. In my own practice, I‘m engaged in a cross-disciplinary approach, particularly drawing from an anthropological perspective.In July, I will be embarking on anthropological fieldwork in Malta.

The project showcased on this page is part of a series called Local Food is an Iilusion, which will be carry on in the next year, mostly questioning about how is the concept of “local” is constructed in the foodscape through investigation practice.

The British Local Fish Cooker is a set of cooking tool reflecting the paradox reality of cod eaten in UK. It uncover a hidden path of cod industry: caught in north Atlantic, cut in China and then eaten in UK. The long distance travel with wave under frozen does not contribute to the food flavor but to the commercial need. Under this, the fish and chips remain to be local food which indicates the notion of LOCAL can be a constructed idea.

In this cooker, a fresh caught cod will be frozen in the pan and remain there for the same time along with a real ship travels. Two performances will take place, when it arrives in China to be cut, and when it returns to Britain to be eaten.

The cod I caught in the waters east of Bridlington.

The Fish & chip store near my house.

This book is a horizontal research of cod eaten in UK. Reviewing the history and now days data, it demonstrate a trans-temporal territory of British constructed LOCAL. From the fish & chips recipe brought by Jewish migrants to the British long distance fishing industry, the material and relations are interlacing at distance meanwhile forming a map beyond LOCAL. By means of the glocalization theory, this book reviewed the nonlinear expansions of territory happened in food system.

book-design food-cultures investigation research

Le Zhang

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Royal College of Art