Interdisciplinary studio based in Berlin merging art and design. Our projects are driven by curiosity—toward science, technology, materials, craft, food, and the senses. We explore how design shapes our perception of the world, placing sensory experience at the center of our creative process. Through a multidisciplinary and collaborative approach, we develop new objects and concepts aimed at enhancing everyday well-being.

We believe design is both a powerful tool for solving real-world challenges and a medium for sparking dialogue—inviting reflection on the cultural, social, and ethical dimensions of contemporary life. Our studio works closely with private clients, architects, companies, and scientists to create unique design experiences, spatial concepts, products, and research-based projects.

This commitment to sensory exploration and critical design is further explored in Omer Polak’s TEDx talk, "Smell as a Design Tool", presented in Lausanne, Switzerland.

studio@omerpolak.com

Picnic On Mars

Ceramic Sculpture

Picnic on Mars is a speculative installation that explores the future of food, ritual, and sensory memory in an era of environmental transformation and space colonization. Commissioned by the Asif Culinary Institute of Israel, the project reflects on the intimate connection between eating and the natural world—and how that bond may be altered, simulated, or lost as humans move into artificial environments.

At its core, a picnic is not only a meal—it is a multisensory communion with nature. The touch of grass, the scent of soil, the breeze on the skin, even the inconvenience of an insect—all contribute to a deeply human and embodied experience. In imagined Martian or space-bound futures, these sensations may no longer be available. Picnic on Mars invites viewers to contemplate: what happens to our rituals when the environment they depend on no longer exists?

The installation simulates a future in which indoor spaces attempt to recreate the outdoors using advanced technologies. Visitors are invited into a constructed picnic environment where natural elements are evoked through visual, olfactory, and tactile means.

At the entrance, four digital windows act as portals into speculative futures. Each window presents a surreal vision that probes the evolving relationship between food, nature, and transgalactic life. One reveals a vast desert landscape scattered with monumental fruit and vegetable fossils—ghosts of abundance. Another offers a view from a spacecraft window, with food ingrediants drifting in the vacuum of space. Two additional windows depict a process of terraforming, visualizing how life might slowly emerge in barren desert landscapes.

Facing the entrance, a six-meter-high living wall features vertically grown vegetation. Edible herbs were cultivated on the lower half of the wall using advanced irrigation and lighting systems, and harvested throughout the exhibition for use in the Asif restaurant. Ornamental plants filled the upper section, blurring the lines between function and display, nature and design.

Opposite the living wall stands a scent dispenser that releases the smell of Earth—a rich, loamy soil scent that anchors the visitor in memory and place, even within a speculative future. The scent serves as an invisible bridge to landscapes we may one day leave behind.

The floor of the installation is covered with 25 television screens displaying looped video footage of natural micro-scenes: blades of grass swaying in the wind, leaves rustling, ants carrying a fallen crumb. These fragments of movement simulate the overlooked but essential details that define an outdoor picnic.

Picnic on Mars is not a nostalgic reconstruction, but a critical provocation. It invites reflection on what we value, what we miss, and what we carry forward. As we confront a future shaped by ecological shifts, planetary exploration, and technological mediation, it asks: How do we preserve the sensory, emotional, and cultural rituals that root us to the Earth?
The project was accompanied by a curated program of lectures, talks, and discussions—organized by the Asif team—featuring leading voices from the food industry and exploring the future of food and alternative approaches to production, consumption, and culture.

Credits:

The project was developed with the support and collaboration of the Asif Culinary Institute of Israel.
Studio OP: Omer Polak, Si Hyun, Eun Ho Choi
Curation support: Anna Carnick and Wava Carpenter
Project Assistent : Tidhar Zagagi
Motion production: Karin Kimel
Programing & Mechanical support: Ido Charni
Graphic Design: Field-Day Studio (Zohar Koren, Idan Am-Shalem, Sari Gabbai)

Exhibition pictures by Ariel Efron