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Goodgod goes green for Vivid 2017

Goodgod returns to Vivid with another pop-up and an ambitious goal: to generate just one bag of rubbish in the process.

Jim Singline and Hana Shimada

Zak Kaczmarek

Everyone loves a pop-up bar or restaurant, but what happens to the fit-out after a venue calls it a day? As Hana Shimada and Jim Singline, former owners of the late Goodgod Small Club in Sydney (now Hudson Ballroom) learned firsthand, an awfully large amount ends up as landfill. Not this time.

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Keen to reduce their environmental footprint, Shimada and Singline have teamed up with Sydney furniture designer Todd Sidery to create The Soft Future Piano Bar: a sustainable pop-up for Vivid 2017 with a strict no-waste policy. They hope the bar, located in the Northern Foyer of the Opera House, can be packed down at the festival’s end with only one bag of waste to show for it.

The pair created the temporary Goodgod Super Club for Vivid 2016, which, despite its success, left Singline with a lasting memory of the waste that was created along the way. “Eight hours after everyone had left the dance floor we had this gigantic skip full of rubbish,” he says. “And that was just from what we’d constructed for the interior.”

Natural materials like felt will be used in the fit-out.

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The 2017 Soft Future Piano Bar will be solely constructed from materials that are “soft on the earth to begin with,” says Singline. Materials will include the likes of natural felt and the inner tubes of truck tyres. “Our experience of doing more temporary spaces lately made us re-evaluate how we can be less indulgent and wasteful in our use of materials,” says Singline. “Especially when we’re doing things with short lifespans.”

The Soft Future Piano Bar will have wine on tap to avoid bottle waste, and napkins, straws and plastic are all banned. Matt Moran’s Events by Aria will be on the food: punters can expect Moran family lamb, vegetables from the Chiswick garden and charcuterie from organically raised pigs. The site will also have a compost system for food scraps.

The pop-up will have DJs playing ambient music each night , and include “conversation pits” where friends can kick back for drinks and views of the harbour. When the party’s over, the materials used in the build will be recycled by Tyrecycle, a company that uses tyre tubes to create yoga mats and running tracks.

And if you’re after a more authentically ‘Goodgod’ experience, their Super Club is also back as part of Vivid 2017.

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The Soft Future Piano Bar, Northern Foyer, Sydney Opera House, Sydney, NSW. Open 26 May – 4 June, 6pm – 1am.

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