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PDU (Portable Dining Unit)

Lead Designers
Prize(s)Silver in Interior Design / Conceptual
Entry Description



PDU (Portable Dining Unit) is designed with the young emerging chefs in mind – pop-up chefs and food truckers with not a lot to spend on dining environments who still want to connect with their guests in a memorable and fashionable way. A novel combination of collapsible screens, portable tables, and folding chairs offers “culinary guerillas” the opportunity for rapid deployment and disassembly within the mobile culinary market. The lightweight translucent shell unfolds like a giant piece of origami to create an extraordinary dining scene, while allowing daylight to filter through. The sculpted veil glows and beckons hungry passersby at night, and filters daylight to provide a sense of inhabited sculpture. PDU presents a solution to the growing demand for temporary, yet intimate dining experiences which can pop-up on demand.

Imagine a complete dining experience anytime, anywhere – spontaneous service with gourmet savvy and a street-food vibe. Go Local with a menu inspired by the morning market featuring the best ingredients by season. Envision chefs on the move, with their trailers or food trucks, vans or bicycles, delivering the day's harvest to a mobile guest. Choose with custom checkbox menus, where guests select ingredients and await the innovative handcrafted cuisine. Celebrate portable dining, to a new level – with the PDU.

Highlights / composition:

• Consists of modular corrugated plastic panels, tied together with simple zip ties – allows PDU to expand or shrink for various dining needs, from a two-person intimate dining to a 50-plus party-under-the-dome experience.

• PDU can be assembled, deployed and modified by just 2 people with DIY tools. No special carpentry skills are required. Simple graphic deployment instruction is on the panels themselves.

• The lightweight organic form within PDU is an art piece crafted from neon drinking straws and complements the undulating organic patterns of the portable shell.