Syd is the real architect
As much fun as it was for Syd to just point at a conjunction of shapes and put it in front of Carmen, as it was that obvious she was sketching new sets (Sydney never beating the autistic headcanon lol), her drawings reminded me of architectural drawings and how she conceptualized dishes back in season 2.
What Syd did here is called an orthographic projection, a very common tool for conceptualizing ideas, especially in engineering and architecture.
Orthographic projection is a technical drawing method that represents a 3D object in 2D by projecting its features perpendicular to a flat viewing plane. Commonly used in engineering and architecture, it typically breaks an object into standard views (like top, front, and side) to preserve true dimensions.
By reducing these dishes to their most basic shapes, she can have a clear understanding of proportion, symmetry, and composition.
If you have ever seen an artist or architect sketching, you have probably seen something like this. And you can see it in plating as well. Artists have to think in basic shapes in order to communicate or compare the essence of an idea.
And of course Carmen couldnāt had an idea of what the drawings meant specifically (as vegetables square, circle protein) but is kinda hilarious that someone who is so interested in architecture had a trouble imagining what Syd was trying to do, just the concept of it. They both are very visual in their conceptualization but when Carmen sketches something he wants as much detail as he can muster, his notes are either chaotic or very detailed illustrations. I think this is supposed to hint how Syd creative process in more centered around creating a good foundation for a plate instead of just the technique in the execution, which is something Carmen is obsessed with most of the time. He spent most of season 3 making plates that were actually not creative at all. The foundation of his dishes (like the foundation of a house) was wrong and no matter how much technique it was implemented, it was never gonna be good without a good foundation. I kinda wonder of Carmyās look in the last gifs is more about him being impressed by all of this, as he often is.
