Souda Bottle Chandelier
From its studio on Varet Street, which used to be a nightclub, the design company Souda—pronounced like the carbonated soft drink—produces a furniture and home-decor collection that includes a chandelier made from plastic bottles. “To get the bottles, we partnered with an organization called Sure We Can, which runs a non-profit redemption center aimed at assisting the homeless individuals who collect bottles off the street,” cofounder Shaun Kasperbauer tells us. “The resulting chandelier has really positive environmental implications, which is not always the case when using plastic.” Kasperbauer, along with Isaac Friedman-Heiman and Luft Tanaka, started the company last fall, after the three former classmates had graduated from Parsons. “The Brooklyn design community and for that matter the New York community at large has been really amazing for us as a young studio,” Friedman-Heiman says. “It’s difficult to consider how Souda would have been able to come as far as it has as quickly as it has without the amazing infrastructure of people, information, and resources that the city offers.”
Photo by Courtney Reagor
