Japanese design firm Nendo designed a new chocolate concept, chocolaTexture, based on shape of the candies as opposed to the ingredients, for Maison et Objet.
ChocolaTexture by Nendo
Rather than considering the cocoa’s country of origin, kind, percentage content, the chocolatier’s technique or the flavors within, Nendo decided to concentrate on the actual shape and texture of 9 different chocolates.
Each is made of the same ingredients and each is roughly the same size (26x26x26mm), but by adding various textures such as points, tiny holes, cubes, ribbed, smooth and granular, the different pieces create different tastes.
Each chocolate is directly named after Japanese expressions used to describe texture.
1. “tubu-tubu” Chunks of smaller chocolate drops.
2. “sube-sube” Smooth edges and corners.
3. “zara-zara” Granular like a file.
4. “toge-toge” Sharp pointed tips.
5. “goro-goro” Fourteen connected small cubes.
6. “fuwa-fuwa” Soft and airy with many tiny holes.
7. “poki-poki” A cube frame made of chocolate sticks.
8. “suka-suka” A hollow cube with thin walls.
9. “zaku-zaku” Alternately placed thin chocolate rods forming a cube.
The ChocolaTexture Packaging
The ChocolaTexture Lounge
The chocolates were presented at Maison et Objet in Nendo’s ChocolaTexture Lounge where a limited edition of 400 boxes were for sale and visitors will be able to sample the sweets.
In order to allow on-the-spot tasting, several pieces of furniture previously designed by Nendo which had a “soft melting feel” were selected from across companies such as Cappellini, Desalto, Glas Italia, Emeco, Offecct, and Moroso which were custom-coloured to resemble chocolate and were placed inside the lounge.
The lounge area is surrounded by a forest of 2,000 8mm-thick aluminium pipes, each of which is carefully painted at the appropriate height in chocolate-coloured gradations, creating the feeling of one being surrounded by “a rippling large molten chocolate wave”.
The chocolatexture lounge is neither a café, nor an exhibition, nor an installation, but a place to experience and enjoy nendo through the five senses.
Designers of the lounge: Koichiro Oniki, Sayaka Ito
images by Photographer Akihiro Yoshida for Nendo and photos of the ChocolaTexture Lounge by © Anne-Emmanuelle Thion for Maison et Objet and Photographer Joakim Blockstrom for nendo