Overview
Drawing inspiration on foods from culinary traditions around the world, De Pop is a shareable concept that is accented by different cultures, allowing us to have flexibility with what’s in season, what is most relevant to the target guest at each location, and to have an option for every palate, while promoting healthier eating.
Services
Concept Development, Culinary Development, Brand Strategy, Pre-Opening Training
Project Team
Client Aloft Brand Team, in partnership with Marriott Middle East and Africa food and beverage team.
Artist Antonyo Marest
Considered packaging open to possibilities.
Aloft is about having options to successfully satisfy all palates and lifestyles. The menu offering extends from breakfast bowls to an eclectic selection of bowls for lunch and dinner, allowing guests to design their own experience whether eating alone and sampling a range of flavors or socializing with a group and sharing a selection of different bowls.
Inspired by Memphis Design.
The design direction for De Pop was inspired by the Memphis Group. This Italian design and architecture group was founded in Milan by Ettore Sottsass in 1982 that designed Postmodern furniture, fabrics, ceramics, glass, and metal objects from 1981 to 1988.
Loud colors and zany patterns, once laughed off as one of many bad decisions made in the 1980s, are enjoying a renaissance, inspiring Greenpoint ceramicists, Supreme collaborations, and an exhibit at the Met Breuer. The movement’s true impact on pop culture is as elusive and twisted as the squiggly lines found in Memphis-inspired patterns. In its rejection of tradition, Memphis has become a playful part of pop culture, celebrated by today’s trendsetters as a symbol of the ’80s.
Artist Collaboration: Antonyo Marest
The De Pop branding was developed in collaboration with Antonyo Marest. His work is built upon a rigorous construction of image, which is usually integrated by an audacious conversation among abstract geometrics, decorative patterns and figurative scaffolds. Overall, his most noticeable feature is the use of some particular color ranges, either from contrast or harmonization, which provides his work with a profound rotundity.
Marest ́s eclectic vision towards art incorporates classical influences, tributes to Art Deco and Pop Art, as well as references to the Kitsch movement of the 50’s. He also recovers futuristic background iconographies and establishes links with the works accomplished in the 80’s by the Memphis group.
This collaboration gives De Pop a distinctive aesthetic that is completely in line with the Aloft brand, yet allows the restaurant concept to stand out in itself.