5.5 Design Studio has created the “Vache à Lait” (Milk Cow) to help users reconnect to the natural processes by which animal produce comes to our tables. Their playful design requires consumers to extract the milk as you would from a cow’s udder.
“Changing people’s habits requires consumers to relearn forgotten pleasures, such as rediscovering the real taste of milk, the kind that comes directly from the cow’s udder: raw milk,” say the designers.
These days we are so used to shopping in supermarkets that many of us have lost our connection with and understanding of where things are coming from. 5.5 Design Studio has created a modern version of the tools of past generations of farmers, before industrial processes, combining the traditional milk jug and milk urn.
The Milk Cow formed part of the exhibition “Milk LAB, designers reinvent milk” at the Milk Factory in Paris. Every morning, the Milk Cow dispenser was topped up with unpasteurised milk straight from the producers, drastically shortening the distance from the cow to the consumer. This raw milk tastes rather different from the pasteurised milk on supermarket shelves, which is often skimmed with the vitamins re-added. The strong and unusual taste of the raw milk challenges the agricultural industry’s effect on how we form our tastes and preferences.
