Podcast – Distinct
Keiko Nakamura
To find design in unlikely places, this podcast taps into the tea practice of a tea specialist in New York City, Mr. Stefen Ramirez. Tea is the most consumed beverage in the world after water so what makes his tea serving special? In the interview, Ramirez discusses his originally concocted tea beverage, Matcha Beer, and reveals his designerly practice of tea-making, where all elements—natural produce, designed artifacts, cultural codes, human skills, and sensibilities—are entangled together. Only through ever-refining and redesigning his practice of tea, can such an extraordinary quality of “elegant bitterness” be materialized in his brew of Matcha Beer.
Bibliography
Kazuo Okakura. The Book of Tea. New York: Dover Publications, 1964.
Elizabeth Shove, and Mika Pantzar. “Consumers, Producers and Practices: Understanding the Invention and Reinvention of Nordic walking.” Journal of Consumer Culture 5, no. 1 (2005).
Audio Credits
Ketsa
Song 1: Stray Not
Song 2: Flowers
Split Phase
Song: The Walk
All licensed under Creative Commons presented on freemusicarchive.org.
Author Affiliations
Keiko Nakamura
MA student, Design Studies, Parsons School of Design
Plot(s) Journal of Design Studies is an annual academic publication edited by graduate students at Parsons School of Design, The New School in New York. The international peer-reviewed journal explores the multiplicity of definitions within design and draws from a broader field of academic disciplines including visual and material culture, anthropology, sociology, and beyond.
Parsons is now offering a Graduate Minor in Design Studies that is designed to complement the MA History of Design and Curatorial Studies and other graduate programs across the university in design, liberal arts, and social research.
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