The story of my Dining Space

For this project we are supposed to design a dinning space which incorporates social media and allows for a global dining experience.  The dinner is to take place two times a year, on the winter and summer solstices.  When working with a project as broad as this it makes the project easier to begin if one first begins with a story.  This is my story for my dinning space.  

One of the main purposes for the dinner is to eradicate hunger so in doing this I have chosen to serve rice as my main dish because rice is a universal food which feeds millions of hungry people.  My initial statement for my dinner is for global partners and neighbors to experience the ritual of another culture through food.  I wish to invite people from some of the leading UN nations who will, through the use of social media, be dinning with people in less fortunate countries.  My room is to be laid out in a rectangular shape (size unknown as of now) with a sideboard embedded within a nook.  My side board will have a plate for every person present and upon that plate will be a traditional rice meal from whichever country they will be dinning with through visual media, such as skype.  Flags above the plates will be there to represent the countries.  Every attendee will dine with someone or many from a separate country.  For example, they will all be dinning together but if there are six people representing six countries at the dinner there will also be six different countries dinning through social media. 

My space will have two slender rectangular tables each facing the other with about 3 feet in between.  Within the 3 feet in between their will be a solid glass bar running the length of the tables with digital panels that are stored within the bar.  In length, the tables are to be 120 inches and about 40 inches.  The tables are to be offset from each other by one seating so no one is directly in front of another, rather they are in more of a zigzag seating arrangement.  This pattern is to compensate for the digital panel for social media that will be directly in front of each seating, between the two tables.  To accommodate for the table needing to seat between 4 to 10 people I have chosen to have a stepped surface in which the table will be stored in the floor.  Each 24 inch seating will be its separate entity making it easier to take away or add to the number of seats.  These separate seating however will not have space between them so when they are all raised out of the floor they are two solid tables.  I wish for my tables also to have some sort of built in light whether it be at each seating or within the middle piece.  This type of lighting is supposed to increase the intimacy due to the fact that although people are dinning together their real experiences are with someone through the digital panel.  Another reason for having a table within the floor and also lighting set into my dining is because I wish for my space to have multiple uses throughout the year when the dinner is not taking place.

I wish for my space to have two wall which consist of only glass windows making the dinners feel a connection to the outside.  On the ceiling of the dinning space there will be a series of mobile reflector panels which will help to alter the amount of direct light that comes into the space.  On these panels are also a series of lights for when the sun goes down.