The project
Produced as a series of ten for the Dining Week Restaurantfestival in Copenhagen, this award recognised the best restaurants from the 2024 edition. Every piece carries the same design, with the festival's own wording, 10 Best Award 2024, on the base.
The approach
The award had to say restaurant without spelling it out. A plate with crossed cutlery does that instantly, and it is also the festival's own mark, so the object and the branding become the same idea rather than one being applied to the other. Making that read as a real object rather than a flat logo meant giving the plate genuine depth, and that is where the construction work went.
How it was made
The plate is built from three layers of laser cut acrylic, stacked and glued so the rim and surface have real thickness, then painted white. The crossed fork and knife are laser cut separately and painted gold. The base is solid smoked oak, which is where the darker tone comes from, engraved with the festival name and the award year. Each award stands around 15 cm tall and was assembled from individually produced components, with the layered plate taking the most work of any part.
Where the same approach works
Building depth out of stacked flat layers is a way of getting a three dimensional object from a two dimensional process. It costs assembly time rather than tooling, which is exactly what makes a run of ten viable when moulding never would be. The same approach suits award series, recognition pieces, signage with physical depth, and any short run object where tooling would cost more than the whole job.
