Madelene Bjork Cake Stand - Wieden+Kennedy combine art and product design

This is a cake stand created by the designer Madelene Bjork as part of Wieden+Kennedy’s W10K project in which a group of product designers where given £10,000 that the design agency had won and told to create something that could be sold and make back the £10,000. The cake stand was just one of several products that they came up with and I think it is a brilliant example of looking at an object differently. Normally a cake stand is designed so that you can cut the cake into several even and identical pieces – with this stand however if you follow the cut lines you will cut the cake into several seemingly random pieces, each of which however will have exactly the same quantity.

Another reason I find this cake stand interesting is that it seems to sit in the gray area where art and product design overlap. In reality (or at least in my opinion) it is a little too inpracticle to be strctly considered a piece of product design - if you where to use it at home you would always have to explain that all the pieces of cake where the same size, or if you used it in a cafe the people getting the long thin slices of cake might feel cheated, as if they where getting less than someone with short fat slice. However as it has a clear and obvious role it can it really be considered art either?