Food­Mar­keto is a joint project between Aparta­mento inte­ri­ors mag­a­zine and Design­Mar­keto, an online plat­form boost­ing up-and-coming inter­na­tional design­ers. Held at the Milan Design Fair 2010 in April, Food­Mar­keto was an exclu­sive series of work­shops where par­tic­i­pants came together to enjoy the dif­fu­sion of cook­ing and design. The work­shops turned out to be very pro­lific draw­ing a lot of atten­tion and good pub­lic­ity. In addi­tion, Food­Mar­keto hosts an online store with designer com­mis­sioned items around the food theme, partly based on the prod­ucts, recipes and ideas resulted in the Milan event.

Recently we had the plea­sure to have a chat with Jerome Rigaud of Design­Mar­keto about this diverse project and its con­tin­u­a­tion in the upcom­ing Lon­don Design Festival.

Food­Mar­keto win­dow dis­play in Milan Design Fair 2010

Mash­mar­ket: Please give us some his­tory of the Food­Mar­keto? What’s the idea behind it?

Jerome Rigaud: Food­Mar­keto came gen­uinely after Marco Velardi, Aparta­mento editor-in-chief, and I met at the Lon­don Design Fes­ti­val in Sep­tem­ber 2009. I think he quite liked Lars Frideen’s chairs we were pre­sent­ing at Kaleid on Red Church street. We wanted to do some­thing together; some­thing related with cook­ing and our friends. Quite nat­u­rally dis­cus­sions after dis­cus­sions, the project set itself up, log­i­cally. This process was very organic — which is how Design­Mar­keto wants to develop itself; and I guess Apartamento’s phi­los­o­phy must be quite close.

MM: How did you team up with Aparta­mento to exe­cute the Food­Mar­keto project?

JR: That was quite infor­mal; we obvi­ously spent quite some time on the com­mis­sion­ing and dis­cussing with the design­ers about what they wanted to do for our event. Marco, who lives in Milan, found a very nice place — the Kalei­do­scope mag­a­zine stu­dio space which had an Enzo Mari exhi­bi­tion upstairs — that was just amaz­ing; peo­ple were super friendly and left us the keys of their office — it took us 2 days to remove every­thing and build an amaz­ing shop, designed by Max Lamb and Lars Frideen — when the Kalei­do­scope staff came back a few days later, they were quite sur­prised… The pres­ence of Enzo was also quite a big thing to us, nice but very impressive.

MM: Peo­ple gath­er­ing together to make and eat food is always a great idea. What do you think was/is the best out­come from a col­lab­o­ra­tion event like this?

JR: I think the whole project was amaz­ing; not only work­ing together, but also wel­com­ing peo­ple in our tem­po­rary kitchen, to our work­shops, to our din­ers — it was so amaz­ing, that we decided to organ­ise a sec­ond one in Lon­don — the same year — dur­ing the Lon­don Design Fes­ti­val. It’s about to come together now — the recipe is very sim­i­lar but dif­fer­ent: friends will any­way stay the main ingre­di­ent The best out­come was the plea­sure we took, and the plea­sure we gave. To see the smile of peo­ple walk­ing out of the shop and work­shops was a very pow­er­ful thing  — I couldn’t believe when look­ing at the shop from out­side that I was part of it.

MM: What are your favorite prod­ucts and col­lab­o­ra­tions so far?

JR: All of them! Each and every project or event, even if they may dif­fer in scale, are always a good oppor­tu­nity to meet new tal­ented peo­ple and friends of friends, and to cre­ate some­thing unique and joy­ful that doesn’t have to last phys­i­cally but that brought together a few nice people…

MM: Can you share us a recipe cre­ated at FoodMarketo?

JR: We are work­ing on a pub­li­ca­tion pre­sent­ing those work­shops and events — it’s com­ing soon! Amongst oth­ers, there will be a recipe for a Green Tea Tooth­paste devel­oped by Arabeschi Di Late for their Beauty Par­lour Ses­sion work­shop, as well as a Jam by Gemma, and some amaz­ing scones by Max Lamb – and many many other deli­cious recipes…
But the other recipe that we don’t have on paper but keep in the back of our mind, and that never fails, is quite sim­ple: bring some pas­sion­ate peo­ple together, ask their friend to join — a bit of tal­ent, long hours of work, some patience and a deep atten­tion to everyday’s lit­tle thing that make all of us happy…

MM: What’s next in the pipeline? Sim­i­lar projects com­ing up?

JR: Beside the next Food­Mar­keto event in Lon­don (called Cof­fee and Friends), we are also pre­sent­ing a Design­Mar­keto Lab look­ing at process and ideas from some of our friends; there will also be a spe­cial “Japan­ese Tea” tast­ing we are organ­is­ing at the Bar­bi­can for later this November.

MM: Any­thing else you’d like to share?

JR: Cup of cof­fee? How do you like yours?
Please come to our (free) cof­fee shop dur­ing the Lon­don Design Fes­ti­val. The Food­Mar­keto event will be on 8B Egger­ton Gar­den Mews, Lon­don SW3 2EH. We will be open every­day (20–26.09) from 10am — 7pm and the pri­vate view is on the 23rd. The best way to see the work­shop sched­ules and other details is to check www.foodmarketo.com.

All pic­tures from Food­Mar­keto flickr.

www.foodmarketo.com

www.designmarketo.com

www.apartamentomagazine.com