Unit Cake 01 is an installation in the form of a prototype automated cake production machine.

The project originates from research on the U.S. Navy’s SEALAB programme (1960s underwater living experiments). In these extreme environments, a recurring detail emerges: cake. Present in military cookbooks and archives, it functions as a ritual of comfort, normality, virility and social bonding under confinement.

From this starting point, a question arises: what would a cake machine designed for such a context look like?

The installation imagines a fictional industrial ecosystem entirely dedicated to cake production, drawing from submarines, Cold War technologies, domestic appliances and food imaginaries.

Behind a colourful and playful surface, the machine follows a strict industrial logic. The graphic language references dazzle camouflage, a naval strategy from the World Wars designed not to hide vessels, but to disrupt perception, scale and movement.

Divided into four stations (reserve, cake baking, glazing module and distribution), the system structures the process. Within this system, the cake becomes ambiguous: both comfort object and potential munition.

Unit Cake 01 reflects on how industrial and military infrastructures can be softened through design, and how production systems can be transformed into narratives of care, abundance and desire.