Craig & Karl Designs the World’s Largest Candy Carpet

Snapshot: Craig & Karl team up with Hong Kong design firm AllRightsReserved to sweeten up the streets with the world’s largest candy carpet.

Size: 14, 000 ft²  // Mass: 13 tons // Length: 607 ft.  // Assembly Volunteers: 2000 // Time to Assemble: 5 days

Craig and Karl never shy away from unusual collaborations, but their current venture with  AllRightsReserved really takes the cake (ok - candy). Made with 13 tons of the stuff, Sweet As One is a massive sidewalk mural stretching along the streets in the business district of Chengdu, China. Outside the steel-and-glass plaid of fashion houses and a street-side row of spindly trees, the candy spreads along the pavement in colorblock patterns of polka dots, flowers, and panda heads.

All to be expected of course from design duo Craig & Karl, whose work is influenced by 80s kitsch and the bright hues of aboriginal art alike. Perfect then, to utilize candy as the medium for this project. The process involves a massive grid stretched out in myriad translucent cubes, in which the volunteers carefully filled out Craig and Karl’s design. And how, you might ask, does it all come together? Well the project is curated by All Rights Reserved, whose past projects including panda mobs and monster-sized rubber ducks, seems to offer them a worthy place directing the thousands of volunteers for the task.

But this collaboration isn’t just an eye-catching performance for China’s New Year celebration. All those cubes of candy will be processed and donated along with nearly 15,000 lunches for underprivileged children in the rural areas around Chengdu. Sweet deal.