14 Mar 2017 / Education and research

The Weekly Bargains are Silk Ribbon Pasta and Showerhead Pizza

The representatives from Design School Kolding are playing with colours, shapes and sustainability when they present a 'super-super' installation during this year’s Milan Design Week.
By Marianne Baggesen Hilger

How about an electronics soup? Or what do you say to a showerhead pizza? The silk ribbon pasta is exquisite, and for dessert there is crème brûlée made of fur.
It mimics a real supermarket – 'REDO Super Supermarket'. There are shelves, there is merchandise and there are shopping baskets. But a closer look reveals that the products are neither edible nor usable in a traditional sense. That’s because they are made of residual materials, supplied by a variety of Danish companies, and altered and REDO'ne into new beautiful pieces of artwork in the best supermarket style.

Please come inside and browse when Design School Kolding opens its exhibition in Milan in April.

The concept was developed in collaboration with former Design School Kolding students who and now run the design agency Femmes Régionales. The details of the supermarket products were crafted by three designers who recently graduated from Design School Kolding. Susanne Nors, Alberto Bellamoli and Sisse Falster have invented, transformed and developed the various works of art with a playful and experimental approach to the material. What happens, for example, when you dip silk ribbon into glue or melt lime-plastic with a fan heater? Suddenly soft leather has become part of a roll of toilet paper; cabbages are sprouting from discarded muffin pans and red wine bottles grow out of polyurethane plastics. Each product has been packaged in new bottles, tins or boxes and organised in almost military style on shelves and racks placed in long aisles – all marked with a label indicating what company the applied material comes from.

Sarcastic commentary to consumption
The installation is a sarcastic commentary to our consumer culture and 'use-and-discard' mentality, a pep talk emphasising that there are alternatives to the massive amount of materials that are wasted every day. But instead of pointing fingers the ‘REDO Super Supermarket 'stages sustainability in a new and playful fashion. The exhibition is meant to be pointing towards a new reality where recycling and sustainability become a natural part of corporate business models, both due to a scarcity of resources, but also because many companies have become aware of how to use design and design thinking to solve challenges. For example they have realised that there is a market for the sustainable solution and for recycling of residual materials – and it can even be done in a playful manner.
Altogether 14 independent companies have agreed to be co-players in the project.

You can experience REDO Super Supermarket in the vibrating zone, Ventura Lambrate, Via Ventura 6, when Milan Design Week kicks off 4 - 9 April 2017 in Milan.
Opening hours: 10:00-20:00 Tuesday 4 April - Saturday 8 April 10:00-18:00 Sunday 9 April 20:00-22:00 Wednesday 5 April: Official opening.

Companies: Easyfood, ECCO, EWII, Republic of Fritz Hansen, Kelsen Group, KMC International, Kopenhagen Fur, La Glace, Montana Furniture, Pressalit, Solar, Vola, Plus Pack, KVADRAT

We appreciate the support of: Kolding Municipality, Region Syddanmarks Kulturpulje and the LEGO Foundation.

“What happens, for example, when you dip silk ribbon into glue or melt lime-plastic with a fan heater? Suddenly soft leather has become part of a roll of toilet paper; cabbages are sprouting from discarded muffin pans and red wine bottles grow out of polyurethane plastics.”