At Bricknic we create cooking tools for togetherness. We design products and event concepts which connect people through the collective preparation of food. Our inventions aim to spark teamwork and collective joy for its users.
Bricknic - a Picnic with Bricks. Our collaborative cooking events celebrate community spirit and aim to put social bonds back on the menu. The Bricknic Cooking Brick is made from natural clay and can be used on your BBQ, fireplace, and in your kitchen oven. Together we can stack the bricks around the fire to cook delicious food.
The use of natural clay preserves nutrients, vitamins, and flavours during the cooking process. When you use a Bricknic product on your own, with your friends and family or even with people you just met, it's guaranteed that you’ll create unforgettable experiences.
At our Bricknic cooking events people come together to build communal oven structures with the cooking bricks. Bricknic events activate the community and strengthen social bonds by building and cooking together.
Please highlight how the project can be exemplary in this context
We aim to develop holistic products and events connecting people, places, food, sustainable production, and conscious consumption.
Our products are made from natural clay which is sourced right next door to our production facility in Germany. Clay is one of the oldest materials for cookware and bricks for construction. Its technical benefits, cultural history, and conceptual qualities make it the perfect material for our products. When cooking with clay the food will be gently steamed to retain nutrients and keep the natural flavour. Cooking in clay is still considered the most healthy way of cooking.
Using clay as a material also allowed us to design the stackable brick to build brick ovens and other cooking constructions for our Bricknic events. Using modularity as a concept to build together is a key function of our events and products. The cooking bricks can be filled with food and stacked around a fire. Its modular and geometric shape allows optimal space usage on the grill and in the oven. The shape and the social function integrate perfectly into the user's existing cooking equipment and social environment.
Our product, if treated well, can last longer than a lifetime, since they are quite literally made from stone, and if they do break then they can be crushed small and returned back to the soil where they eventually become sand. Our products allow us to contribute to sustainable consumerism through health, environmental, and at the base of everything, social aspects. We believe that a society with a constructive and healthy social environment is more able to develop towards a better version of itself and its living environment.
Please highlight how the project can be exemplary in this context
For the design of the Bricknic Cooking Brick, we used the most archetypical shape of a Brick. The brick shape is reduced to its pure function and will stay timeless. The rounded corners and surface give the cooking brick a user-friendly feel which is ergonomically easy to handle.
The Bricknic Cooking Brick can be used to build a cooking construction and will transform the event site eventually into sculptural landmarks made out of beautifully beige and black shaded bricks. The design allows the user to identify with the cooking tool and build a relationship with the object. Its surface will develop a patina over time. While using the patina it will create an even better feel. The geometric and functional appearance suggests an elegant design that makes it accessible to create a feeling of ownership and offers space for creativity in its application. At the same time, its figurativeness and association with building bricks establishes a playful momentum.
Please highlight how the project can be exemplary in this context
Bricknic approaches all its key values and objectives through a social design approach. At the base of everything, we are making cooking tools for togetherness. We work from a communal and participative starting point, targeting aspects of health, ecology, and diversity.
This is best illustrated by the Bricknic event concept. At a Bricknic event, we hand our Cooking Bricks to the participants. All participants can fill their Cooking Bricks and start a fire to construct an oven structure. Inside this structure, heat builds up and will cook the food-filled bricks. When everything is cooked, the structure (Bricknic oven) will be dismantled and everyone can eat together from the Bricks. Different diets are no problem, each cooking Brick can be filled with individual ingredients.
Bricknic events celebrate communal eating where everyone has to contribute one brick to build a community oven.
We aim to develop the bricknic event format even further to connect people by building ovens and cooking sites together. Besides joining a Bricknic event, if someone purchased a brick she/he will be able to join our Bricknic community map and connect to other people with bricks online. By creating interaction between community members, users can connect and start Bricknic events themselves. Other than that, Bricknic events can be used to strengthen and facilitate neighbourhood communities, team-building events, food festivals, or other celebrations.
Please highlight how this approach can be exemplary
Sustainability:
We create our designs focusing on the social and ecological impact on its environment. Our production partner, the original Römertopf company, existing already for more than 50 years, produces all our Bricknic products handmade in Germany. Keeping production local and close to the people. Cooking in clay is not only the most healthy way to cook, it is also able to reintegrate into the natural habitat of the earth as soil after its lifespan as a product. No metals or plastics are used to produce our cooking tools.
Aesthetic:
Our material of choice is natural clay. This clay can simply be put into the open fire to cook food. We design our product based on the functionality of the material. Our Cooking Brick is designed to stimulate collaboration. Our design remains a simple geometric shape and the material and surface allow time and usage to leave their marks. The Bricknic Cooking Bricks are usable on the open fire, the gas cooker, various types of BBQs, and ovens. The design fits the ergonomics of the human body and also the ergonomics of the cooking environment.
Inclusion:
For us, it is important that we approach sustainability and aesthetics with the focus on inclusion. With our Bricknic events, we promote food diversity and are collecting recipes from all different cultures, which we then share via our DIY community cookbook. We are supporting local cooking and neighbourhood projects. Such as a local initiative "het Buurthuis" in Eindhoven (NL). Fire cooking chefs in Belgium. A natural recreation facility in the heart of Germany. We celebrated a Bricknic event at Schloss Hollenegg in Austria and cooked in various local food markets all over the Netherlands, Germany, and Belgium.
Cultural communal events and community development:
With the Cooking Brick, we created a tool combining disciplines of placemaking, social design, and food design. We started organising Bricknic Events on flea markets, small city festivals, university workshops, neighbourhood centres, cultural events, and exhibition openings. For example, we organised a Bicknic event for a maker space in the community of Herentals in Belgium who then decided to provide each resident and community member with a cooking brick. Who are now actually using the bricks to cook together. The Cooking Brick became a central binder and cooking tool of the community. This is just one example where we initiate an event and the community decides to take it further by themselves.
Bricknic Community:
Our Bricknic community is steadily growing and continuously shares their creations via social media with us and the world. We see people all over Europe using the cooking Bricks creating new recipes and even inventing new ways of using the cooking Brick.
Rainer H from Germany is filling his Instagram profile with brick recipes, created Bricknic hashtags, and has announced Brick cooking days publicly where he cooks every meal of the day with a brick and lets his followers take part in it. Gudrun from Germany decided to collect her recipes in a small physical booklet that fits perfectly into the Cooking Brick and send one to us. Later on, she created a few booklets for us as a gift for the user community.
Intergenerational outreach and cultural diversity:
Our users are from all places and cultures, which is no surprise since in every culture one can find traces of clay pot cooking. Each culture has a different twist to cooking in clay pottery and the Bricknic Cooking Brick can be adapted to each personal background.
Please also explain the benefits that derived from their involvement.
Inspiration by traditional brick making
The idea was born while researching traditional local brickmaking. A process where bricks get shaped from a wet clay and then fired in a kiln made by the bricks itself. We got inspired by these large oven structures to cook food with a big group.
Collaboration with Römertopf company
We made our first prototypes and reached out to the Römertopf company. Directly on our first day of meeting with Römertopf, we had a design session in which we translated our design to the technical requirements of the production line at the Römertopf facility.
Public events as application tests
Just as with our own prototypes, we went directly with the new product on public events where they were tested to the extreme by all participants. It created and is still creating a wonderful feedback loop between workers at Römertopf, ourselves and the users. It shows us that a product can always be improved even if it is as simple as a brick.
Art and design exhibitions:
We presented Bricknic at many art and design exhibitions such as Dutch Design Week, Salone del Mobile, Material District and Designkwartier Den Haag .
With Bricknic we aim to connect diverse communities on a local scale, sparking collaboration and teamwork around the activities of building and cooking together. We designed a cooking tool that truly connects people all over the world. So far we are holding Bricknic events in the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, and Austria. We aim to continue to connect participants from every cultural and social background. We are distributing our product Bricknic Cooking Brick in 24 countries and therefore enabling people everywhere to connect to our bricknic online community. We are working on building a global network of bricklayers (Bricknic users). We are empowering them to hold Bricknic events in their respective communities and social groups. With our Bricknic philosophy, events, and design approach we directly tackle the growing social distance around the world. We are using food and brick as literal connectors between people. With almost 60k distributed products and 100 events and 6000+ social media followers, we are receiving great positive feedback for our mission to build and eat together while using sustainable cooking tools made from a natural material locally produced in Germany.
Furthermore we support diversity in our user community as well as in the dishes and ingredients that end up in our products for being cooked. All together we as Bricknic advocate for a sustainable consumerism approach to design products which last longer than a human lifetime, support the social interaction between people and enable everyone to cook tasty and healthy food.
Designing for togetherness
We decided to start to design from a social concept point of view, rather than designing a simple consumable product. We design togetherness, teamwork, and collaboration through the application of our cooking tool. One product as a social connector and entire events designed around it. This holistic design approach enables us to create valuable connections between users, products and applications.
Collaboration based product design
Our products are not only working for and towards communal situations, they are designed in moments of co-creation with our users, production partners, and event participants.
Designing within sustainable collaborations
We see a high value in collaborating with medium-sized companies especially when they are of an older generation. To this end, we have developed a strategy on how we, as Bricknic, can work together with medium-sized manufacturers and how we can effectively align them with our design concepts for end-user products in a sustainable manner. We notice that there are a big number of traditional companies in Germany that do not always produce in a sustainable or contemporary manner and have therefore set ourselves the goal of tapping this potential through targeted joint-venture collaborations with Bricknic.
Please provide clear documentation, communication of methodology and principles in this context.
Bricklayers (Bricknic Community)
The cooking tools we make can empower others to do events. Therefore we are building a community of people and encouraging them to organise their own events and services with our tools. Together with these people, our bricklayers, we are setting up gatherings to inspire each other, share experiences, create recipes, do test cooking and organise events. People who join this group can be for example students, people in pension, people who need to reintegrate into working life, newcomers, social workers, and basically anyone with a passion for cooking, eating, and social gatherings. Another opportunity can come to a bricklayer with the option to become a reseller of our products, which can offer extra financial support if one decides to start a social business.
Product developments and collaborations
We are keen to share our experience of product development with other people in the industry. We have been realising products in the fields of ceramics, food but also have insights into the making of heat-resistant gloves. The important part of our experience lies less in the design process one does anyways learn about during usual design education, but more in the process of bringing your design to production and to the market while keeping track of your values and design decisions. This has a lot to do with collaboration in the short and long term with various partners like other brands, producers, freelancers, and services. Collaboration is obviously something that develops over phases of the project, the market situation but also in terms of personal and professional alignments.
Please find attached our Bricknic Event Catalogue and our Bricknic DIY Community Cookbook.
Bricknic event videos:
@Bricknic.org , 2020
Content licensed to the European Union.