Trends: Design good enough to eat

Designers have developed a taste for the edible. Japanese maverick Nosigner (www. nosigner.com), will be exhibiting a Spring Rain light unit at 100% Design in September, made out of bean-starch vermicelli, which can be eaten when boiled.

Elsewhere, French designers Sébastien Cordoleani and Franck Fontana have developed a range of sweets (pictured) that double as objets d'art for Barcelona's Papabubble sweet store (www. papabubble.com). Approaching sugar in a similar way to glass, the duo mould and blow it into delightful shapes that you can wolf down – or just leave out on display.

And for her final degree show in 2007, RCA graduate Greetje van Helmond took basic foodstuffs and transformed them into jewellery made from sugar crystals.