Design Map · Eindhoven
Nigredo
Graduation project by Paul Lehner at Design Academy Eindhoven, 2026. Shown during Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven on Design Map, location F5.
With ‘Nigredo’, Paul Lehner has created a spatial dining experience that sits between craft and gastronomy, inspired by the different ways that materials can become black. The designer explores the concept of 'black' not only visually, but through their sensory and tactile qualities. Served around a low table and stools, each course of the dining experience is inspired by a particular material transformation. First comes 'Combustion', where wood and other materials are charred through heat. Then 'Oxidation', where matter is transformed through a chemical process, and finally 'Occurence', where materials such as clay are naturally dark in origin. Each course includes a specially prepared dish inspired by the material properties of that which it is served on – including burnt rice cream, black garlic aïoli, and olive tapenade with sepia. Liberated from being just a colour, black can be experienced in ways that it bears traces of an alchemical transformation.