The Department of Design is pleased to host this year’s Butter Goeller Design Affair, featuring internationally recognized food designer Marije Vogelzang from the Netherlands. We are delighted to welcome Marije Vogelzang to Ohio State, where she will engage students, faculty, and the community in exploring how design can shape our relationships with food, body, habit, and environment.
About Marije Vogelzang
Marije Vogelzang is a pioneering Dutch “eating designer” whose work reimagines food not merely as sustenance but as a medium for experience, connection, and reflection. A graduate of the Design Academy Eindhoven, she has spent more than two decades exploring how eating—and the rituals surrounding it—can be designed to engage the senses, provoke curiosity, and inspire new ways of thinking about food.
Her notable works include immersive dining installations such as “Eat Love Budapest,” in which Roma women shared meals and stories with participants in a setting that challenged assumptions about food, culture, and identity. Beyond her studio practice, Vogelzang has led the Food Non Food department at Design Academy Eindhoven and founded the Dutch Institute of Food & Design, a global platform for food-centered creative research.
Vogelzang’s publications include Eat Love: Food Concepts by Eating Designer Marije Vogelzang (2008) and Lick It: Challenge the Way You Experience Food (2022). Her work sits at the intersection of design, food culture, psychology, and sustainability, driven by her belief that “studying food is not about food—but about studying the eating human being.”
About the Butter Goeller Design Affair
The Department’s endowed fund, The Annual Reinhart Butter and Heike Goeller Design Affair Fund, supports workshops, roundtables, debates, and lectures led by distinguished experts in fields represented within The Ohio State University Department of Design.
Established by Professors Emeriti Reinhart Butter and Heike Goeller—who will be in attendance—the fund aims to advance both the theory and practice of design through participatory and thought-provoking events.