Temporary Bar was the winner of a students’ competition aiming for the design of a stall for Porto’s Faculty of Architecture in an academic event. The given implantation, the fast construction and the low budget were some of the premises which had to be considered for the design of this temporary structure that should be built in just one week with the support of students.
Building from IKEA’s concept ‘Do It Yourself’, the project is a parallelepiped made out of different depth IKEA storage boxes resulting in a modular building with a textured skin that stands out as a visual reference.
The dimensions of the applied storage box are the structural modules of the entire project. In addition to the fact of its evident compositional qualities, the boxes, made of a resistant polypropylene translucent plastic, serve as well as basis of the structural logic of the project, therefore assuming as structural membrane.
It is a process that starts from assembling units in order to reach the whole. The project is divided in four types of modules (groups of boxes fixed to wooden structural frames) applied in a workshop and then transported to the implantation site. Thus, the boxes are organized in modules with considerably reduced weight and size, which are applied to the primary steal frame structure on site. The convex shape of the boxes and therefore of the modules with the aim to maintain the interior space completely empty, obliged a custom detail of the “stretched” hinges.
The LED network in the concave interior spaces marks the exterior pattern of light, intensely changing the bar appearance: by day a white abstract and closed volume; and by night a glamorous box of changing light following the DJ set. Night over night, drinks were sold out.
