Eunyoung Lee

Department: Social Design
Website: eun0.com

Fresh Instant Coffee

In today’s society we have come to expect instant gratification when it comes to consumption. We want our food and drinks right away. ‘Fresh Instant Coffee’ by Eunyoung Lee is a new type of vending machine that forces us to wait, giving us space to re-think our obsession with the immediate. The machine takes its time to produce the ‘instant’ coffee, from roasting the beans to the final product. Because the mechanics are transparent, the entire process can be seen as it occurs. The term ‘instant coffee’ here does not literally mean soluble coffee powder. Instead, the machine provides a coffee sachet, enabling quick use by pouring hot water over it.
“By combining the suggestion of rapid service with a delayed delivery, the machine creates a linguistic and conceptual paradox that plays on the nature of time, consumption, and what we understand to be fresh and artisanal,” says Eunyoung. The project is a functional symbol, exploring how the development of technology has accelerated our speed of living, shortening the time for results. Should efficiency and convenience really be that important?