This article is part of our Design special report previewing Milan Design Week.
“Regular pasta — having to stab it with a fork — it’s not very graceful,” said the designer Bodin Hon. Together with his wife and business partner, Dilara Kan Hon, he has brought a touch of style to one of the world’s most inelegant foods.
Collaborating with soy-milk producers and egg-themed restaurants, the couple’s agency, Studio Yellowdot, based in Istanbul and Hong Kong, has created winsome products, along with events that blend technology, art and, quite frequently, consumables. Last year, during Milan Design Week, the pair presented a floor lamp, kinetic sculptures and tabletop objects all made of eggshells. This season they are returning with a pasta-themed initiative sponsored by the biggest name in the macaroni business: Barilla.
Open in the Porta Venezia district, “Edible Reveries” is an offbeat furniture installation that highlights an unusual product line from the global pasta manufacturer. “It started as an experiment,” said Valentina Parravicini, the head of Artisia by Barilla, a specialty brand introduced by the company in 2014 to explore what may be the most disruptive industry innovation since the eggbeater.
“With 3-D printers, we can make shapes that would be impossible by hand,” Ms. Parravicini said. “It’s not a gimmick. It’s a different way of enjoying pasta.”
With forms like the quadrilateral shell called the Cube, the delicate, star-shape Sky and the Bunny (exactly what it sounds like), Artisia pastas are designed with the aid of software, then excreted by a precision-guided, gunlike mechanism.
Running about $15 for a 12-pack container, the inch-long dried pasta shells, which lengthen when cooked, are not intended to be served en masse under sauce, but as finger food that is boiled and then filled with whatever purée the chef might dream up.
“It’s an attempt to bridge the gap between the physical bite and the digital byte,” Ms. Parravicini said, adding that the line is gaining popularity with hospitality professionals and the public.
A chance encounter between the Yellowdot duo and Artisia representatives during last year’s Milan Design Week led to a monthslong spit-balling session, with the designers ultimately paying a visit to Barilla’s primary production facilities in the northern Italian city of Parma. There, the Hons toured the plant where the bite-size cups are formed — 36 of them every five minutes, a significant leap from producing nine every five minutes a decade ago — and got a sense of the history and outlook of the conglomerate that is now the world’s largest supplier of pasta.
“The way Barilla thinks about every single detail is really impressive,” Ms. Kan Hon said. “Every region has its own kind of pasta, and they have a stamp for every one of them.” Thus inspired, she and Mr. Hon set to work on what would become “Edible Reveries.”
The installation will feature two primary components, both tasteful in different senses of the word. On the one hand, there is the furniture: including a daybed, a lounge and a rocker, all fashioned in noodle-like extruded shapes and arranged in a storefront space among billowing curtains and dimmed lamps. On the other hand, there is the food: custom-designed 3-D-printed pasta pieces that strongly resemble the furniture, topped with sauces concocted by Artisia’s chefs and served alongside nonalcoholic aperitifs from Cantina Pizzolato, an organic winery.
Crucially, the seating — which is rendered in a plastic with wood-fiber composite selected for its doughy shade and sheen — is not intended for consumption. During daily tastings, guests can recline and indulge in the 3-D-printed pasta, including the nest-shape Spaghetto 3D; the Yellowdot-designed pasta will also be available for sale online.
With other foodie fare coming to town, including a cooking exhibition from Ikea, the Hons will have plenty of competition for taste buds. But they appear to relish the challenge. “The fair is such a big thing,” Mr. Hon said. “And then of course there’s the food culture in Italy.”
The good news, they say, is that Artisia is worth a try — tender yet toothsome, and easy to cook. Their audience is bound to be discriminating: if nothing else, the Milanese know how to put out a good spread.
“Edible Reveries” is open Tuesday through April 26 at 34 Via Melzo, Milan. Reservations are required. They can be booked at artisia.com.
The post At Milan Design Week, Noodling Around With an Italian Classic appeared first on New York Times.
