This output is a Second-order Design Fiction that challenges current systems of production and consumption. The first iteration of this output got published in DISCERN’s Spring Issue of 2022, which was a wonderfully surprising outcome of my workbook for Sally Sutherland’s Radical Modes module. It builds upon two years of researching, collaborating, reflecting and making.

The Dandelion Latte seeks to illustrate how products are systemic objects and explores how comforting habits, such as coffee consumption, may be reimagined to sit within a consumption corridor in a desirable futures context. As a metaphor for products from a planet-centered paradigm, it contrasts with our current post-colonial and agnotological systems of provisioning. It rejects the threads to historical and modern-time extraction and exploitation of the Global South where the global coffee supply is at risk of climate change and rural exodus. Instead, it points to a local Northern geography, place and culture. Collaborating with dandelion adds to the provocation by re-framing an undesirable weed in a potentially aspirational and caringly regenerative context.

Brighton has over 245 coffee shops which points to the question of how a complementary alternative could impact the local culture and economy. The Dandelion Latte was developed in collaboration with baristas Mustafa Perçin of Dharma Coffee and Tommy Hardman, with biodegradable packaging material from MarinaTex.

Map of regenerative terminology that may make up a planet-centered system and ecological paradigm from which the Dandelion Latte originates. Adapted from Tham’s “Me, We, World and back again” creative practice and literary review.
Tham, Mathilda, “Up Close and Personal: Metadesign Meditation to Find Agency for Careful Earth Work from Within a Ball of Yarn,” Metadesigning Designing in the Anthropocene, ed. John Wood, (Taylor & Francis, 2022), pp. 19-32.