Welcome to Tomatoland!
We suggest the following exercise: open your fridge and locate all the packaging you could do without. Too many, right?
Now imagine that you hit the zoom button and go inside the fridge! That is the experience proposed by the pop up ** Tomatoland **.
Swim in a pool of ketchup or get between the floors of a hamburger These are just some of the things you can do in Tomatoland, the giant fridge that will be in New York's Soho until November 30.
The purpose of this colorful and original pop up? Remind citizens of the importance of caring for and keeping the city clean.
A giant fridge in New York's Soho
WITH ALL OF YOU, DR. TOMATO
The protagonist of Tomatoland is dr tomato , a nice character who introduces us to the city from his point of view and he tries to make New Yorkers aware of excessive consumption and encourages them to protect the environment.
Dr. Tomato was exported from the Galapagos Islands –which inspired Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution and are considered the purest and most remote land on the planet– to manhattan and since then he lives and enjoys the Big Apple as a true New Yorker.
However, during these years, he has been realizing something: "I realized that the city has serious environmental problems, such as plastics and the excessive use of packaging."
Therefore, he came up with the idea of creating Tomatoland as the epitome of Manhattan, “to remind people of the importance of protecting the city's environment” says Dr. Tomato.
The objective? Raise awareness of the importance of protecting our environment
TO THE FRIDGE!
Tomatoland has seven rooms and more than twenty scenes of the funniest spread over 370 square meters, where people will be able to interact with the environment and see a step-by-step explanation of how we citizens ruin the environment.
In the Ketchup Pool , whose water comes from a plastic bottle instead of coming out of a tap, you will be able to meet and swim alongside members of Dr. Tomato's family.
Do not doubt use bottle caps as a means of transportation to cross over to meet his cousins, the green tomatoes.
Refrigerator World , on the other hand, is most colorful and exquisite, but all the delicious products are trapped in packages!
Paper Towel Tunnel is a tunnel of paper rolls whose interior looks like a fallen tree and constitutes the main traffic artery of Tomatoland.
A giant fridge in New York's Soho
FROM THE KEPCHUP POOL TO THE NOODLES STATION
Tired of all the refrigerator hustle and bustle? Take a break on the noodle swing!
Here you can swing for a while and then go try on the side dish costumes and stop at Burger Stop and feel like a tomato on a burger.
Burger!
The living room Paradise Bread , on the other hand, is a metaphor for the ending of The Truman Show and it is designed in a hypnotic and infinite way.
there we find some stairs of bread with Nutella at the end of which is an unreal door that says "Paradise".
The theme of this space is none other than think about the future and make people aware that this "paradise" will disappear forever if people ignore environmental problems.
Some stairs of bread to nowhere
THE NEED TO TAKE IMMEDIATE MEASURES
"I really wish that people in New York City care more about their living environment" says Fiona Dong, lead designer on the project and creator of Dr. Tomato.
"Tomato is a common ingredient in people's refrigerators. and all the scenes from Tomatoland take place on people's refrigerators every day,” says Fiona.
Therefore, they decided to present this exhibition from the perspective of the tomato: "we hope that people think about excessive consumption and environmental problems in the city and let's get people reminded that immediate action needs to be taken," says Fiona.
Admission costs $22 (about €20) for adults, $18 (€16) for students and $16 (€14) for children 2 to 12 years old. You can purchase your tickets here.
Do you fancy tomato for a day?
There is a lot of packaging that we can do without!