This One-Off Kitchen Has Been Crafted From Discarded Materials

Brussels-based collective Espace Aygo has transformed found materials into a one-of-a-kind kitchen. Crafted inside the Copenhagen gallery of Tableau, the “Patchwerk” kitchen is fully functioning, but entirely unique.

To create it, Espace Aygo – comprising Sijmen Vellekoop, Salomé Sperling, Jaime Le Bleu, and Line Murken – picked up recycled materials from across the city. Colourful details are added onto the metal surfaces, which conceal a dishwasher and fridge, and are complete with a stove, sink, lamp and glass holder.

The sink is cast concrete, with a tap disguised as a tree branch, while the splash backs extend from the countertops and are cut in a waving pattern.

Patchwerk was born out of a month-long residency, during which Espace Aygo set up shop inside Tableau’s gallery. Their overarching vision was to delve into the ways functional art performs in real life, and in addition to the physical objects, the produced a series of performances and video works relating to this theme.

To launch the kitchen, Tableau brought in chef Sebastian Lothar Berthelsen, founder of Rootless. Inspired by Patchwerk, he created a menu that featured exclusively foraged or donated ingredients. “Espace Aygo approaches spaces as functional artworks, and sees spatial art and design as a performance,” Tableau founder Julius Værnes Iversen said. “Essentially, the artist collective believes that every room has the potential to be an artwork, a philosophy embodied in their own living and working space in Brussels, where they surround themselves with, use and test all of the works that they are producing.”

Take a closer look at the Patchwerk kitchen in the gallery above, and for more design – check out Karimoku’s first ever lighting collection.