Social Warming with 28 Posti

A project by food designer Martí Guixé and chef Marco Ambrosino, in collaboration with students of Scuola Politecnica di Design di Milano

For the Milano Design Week 2021, the restaurant 28 Posti renews its invitation to an international designer to create a 4 handed menu with Chef Marco Ambrosino.

The Catalan food designer Martí Guixé and Marco Ambrosino both design a dinner-manifesto in which the objects and the menu rework in a symbolic key the concepts of environmental, economic, and social sustainability. They aim to demonstrate how through a sustainable restaurant model it is possible to contribute positively to the fight against food waste and change consumer habits with concrete messages.

The project was carried out in collaboration with the students of the master’s in Food Design and Innovation of the Scuola Politecnica di Design SPD. The students were coordinated by both the designer and the Chef and were invited to participate in the theme of the dinner and concepts brought to the table of the 28 Posti.

From this didactic experience, 3 objects have been designed by the students and the other 4 objects have been designed by Martí Guixé. The Political objects or “speaking objects” – as the designer defined them – have the task of communicating a message linked to the themes of the dinner. A non-functional but communicative object accompanies each dish on the tasting menu, and through its mere presence on the table generates curiosity and stimulates social exchange. The inclusion of these “speaking objects” extends the simple ingestion of a meal in an entertaining way and allows it to please the senses while giving free rein to ideas, ideologies, and politics.

For the recipes Marco Ambrosino develops the issues addressed by his kitchen and creates dishes with low environmental impact products, selecting producers who respect ecosystems and biodiversity and using ingredients that are attentive to local needs and to the enhancement of the territory.

The Social Warming menu – an exchange on a social level during the dinner – invites the guests to reflect on how to use what is left over, how long it can be consumed for, and who or what determines that it can no longer be consumed.

Social Warming is an event that the public will be able to experience firsthand from the 3^rd to the 12^th of September. It is possible to book the dinner and chose a menu of 6, 8 or 10 courses.

“Most of the time – says Guixé – a restaurant menu appears as a sequence of dishes that configure a message of pleasure on the palate, but it does not make the complexity of the thought required for its production legible. Social Warming will be a gastronomic menu designed with a logic that allows you to taste and enjoy the most of textures, smells, and flavors, but at the same time, it consciously wants to generate a stance in those who will use the menu. The Social Warning Meal is a parallel menu, inedible and made of designed objects, which sometimes communicates in a subliminal way, sometimes more directly, the attitude embedded in the food. The Social Warning Meal is a tasting menu that combines with gastronomic activism.”

MARTÍ GUIXÉ

Martí Guixé was born in Barcelona in 1964. He studied Interior design in Barcelona and Industrial design at the Polytechnic School of Design. He lives and works “on living matter” between Barcelona and Berlin. He defines himself as an “ex-designer” and works for companies such as Alessi, Camper, Chupa-Chups, Desigual, Droog Design, Saporiti, and Danese. He has exhibited at the MoMA in New York,  at the Design Museum in London, at the MACBA in Barcelona, and at the Center Pompidou in Paris.

MARCO AMBROSINO

Marco Ambrosino is a young chef from Procida who offers contemporary cuisine, which uses only seasonal products, oriented towards ethical values, attentive to the quality of food, respect for the environment, and the fairness of production processes. His previous experiences have allowed him to create a balanced combination between traditional Campania cuisine and experimental and avant-garde cuisine. He is a cooking teacher at the Food Genius Academy in Milan and collaborates with the Advanced Course of Italian Cuisine of ALMA International School of Italian Cuisine.

Scuola Politecnica di Design SPD

SPD is the first Italian “post-graduate” school, it was founded in 1954 in Milan. The school is conceived as a bridge towards the creative professions. The training offer consists of advanced training programs and university Masters that embrace different areas: from the product to the spaces, from communication to mobility. The Department of “Food Design” and the “Food Ideas research laboratory”, are among the school’s most recent projects to promote innovation in the agri-food sector. SPD’s activity has been recognized internationally with the Compasso d’Oro award.