the Spoon Press

An experiential micro-factory where people can press their own gelato spoons

Client

● Independent

Discipline

Machining, Engineering, User Experience, Industrial Design

Assembly

Custom Machines, Corrugated Steel Booth, 316 SS Blanks, Packaging

Date

2025

Client

Disciplines

Assembly

Date

● Independent

Machining, Engineering, User Experience, Industrial Design

Custom Machines, Corrugated Steel Booth, 316 SS Blanks, Packaging

2025

The Spoon Press is a pop-up booth that invites the public to step directly into the production process of Design.

In a world of mass consumption, many of us have become detached from how objects are made. Our relationship with manufacturing has slowly dissolved behind the gloss of packaging and marketing.

○ Activated during Dutch Design Week 2025, in collaboration with Intelligentia ICE

By placing the material into the hands of visitors, the Spoon Press allows them to shape and industrially press it into a contemporary utensil — a form typically reserved for more controlled, luxurious, or inaccessible contexts

Through custom-built machines optimised for child-friendly forces, the Spoon Press reveals the mechanics behind industrial metal forming: a process behind countless objects we touch daily, yet one that remains distant or intimidating to those outside design and manufacturing circles.

By actively participating, visitors feel how pressure, leverage, and tolerance work together to transform a flat sheet into a refined, functional form. They end by testing the spoon they’ve just made, feeling the contours shaped by their own hands; because good design is not only seen, but made, felt, and experienced.

The process starts with a blank of pre-polished and deburred 316 Stainless Steel. The participant slots the blank into the first press machine. With firm pressure, they pull down, pressing the concave bowl profile for the spoon.

They then flip the piece and place it in-between the jaws of the 2nd press machine. Holding the handles firmly, they squeeze inwards, pushing the walls of the piece and deepening them into the stem.

Over the course of 2 days, the Spoon Press attracted people from all over — families, children, elderly, designers and non-designers.

Visitors enjoyed a comprehensive experience, from understanding the story of the Spoon Press, to pressing their own Press Spoons, to testing them with gelato from our collaborator Intelligentia ICE, and finally having their spoons cleaned and packaged in custom paper sleeves.

Because good design is not only seen, but made, felt, and experienced.