Stories On Design // Hospitality & Event Pop-Ups.

It’s been a little while since we’ve spoken about Retail Pop-Ups, so it’s about time we followed up with another Story that focused on Hospitality & Event Pop-Ups, dontcha think?

Much like their retail counterparts, gone are the days when Event Pop-Ups were simply clever PR stunts or an excuse for mediocre premises that have been knocked up by someone’s handy uncle who can cunningly transform Bunning’s chipboard into bench seats. Add a coupla milk-crates and boom – you got yourself a rustic café. Ummm… Negative, captain. I’m sure you’ll all agree that Temporary Installations and Event Pop-Ups have reached new heights and broken new ground, bringing about innovation, excitement and types of experiences the switched-on crowds are seeking out.

It’s all simply part of the “hipsterfication” of the events and hospitality scene, and the world in general. The increasingly switched on, demanding and design-savvy consumers are always on the hunt for something exciting they haven’t seen before, leading to the humble Pop-Up concept getting elevated to an art form.

Today we explore a bunch of different kinds of Event Pop-Ups. Bars, Cafes and Restaurants – yes, but also corporate events on steroids (Melbourne Spring Racing Carnival, anyone?), fashion events, and some interesting temporary museums thrown in for good measure.

So… By now you know the drill. Let’s dive into some of the most notable examples of Event Pop-Ups that have caught our attention.

Related: The Art of Retail Pop-Ups.

See More ‘Stories on Design’ Curated by Yellowtrace.

Images courtesy of The Blind Eye Factory.

Wire Mesh Installation for an Event in Abu Dhabi by Edoardo Tresoldi // In collaboration with Design Lab Experience, Italian artist Edoardo Tresoldi (you might remember him from this installation) has recreated a vast indoor “piazza” surrounded with ephemeral architectural fragments for a large event in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi. Spanning across 7,000sqm of event space, the installation was built entirely from wire mesh, comprising domes, arches, columns, colonnades and 1:1 scale replicas of Italian basilicas. Ummm… Wowzer, dude. If I just closed my eyes enough to make those average looking “function chairs” disappear, this space would probably be enough to reduce me to tears.

Related: ‘Incipit’ Wire Mesh Sculpture for Italian Festival Meeting del Mare.

Photography © Agostino Osio, courtesy of OMA.

Miu Miu Paris Pop-Up Club in Paris by AMO // In July 2015, AMO, the research arm of Dutch studio OMA, created a temporary nightclub for fashion brand Miu Miu, which hosted a pop-up event including a dinner, a fashion show, and several musical performances. Inside the 1937 art deco Palais d-Iena, Paris’ current CESE government offices, the one-night event was held in the Hypostyle, using a scaffolding ring to create a ‘room within a room’. Borrowing cues from 1990s nightclubs, the AMO design “referenced an underground and industrial atmosphere with strip lighting, metal grids, and PVC sheets”. OMG this whole scenario is soooo Zoolander, it hurts. I’ll be really disappointed if no Walk Off took place on the night!

Photography by Lucas Dawson.

Myer AW16 Runway within Sydney’s Barangaroo Reserve by Gloss Creative // If there’s one thing Amanda Henderson and her team at Gloss Creative know how to nail, it’s the fine balance between the ephemeral, and the permanence of a memory that event and space can leave behind. Although it’s been many, many years since my interview with Amanda in June 2010, our e-chat remains as one of my all-time favourites until this day. Anyway, this was a sublime and commanding fashion experience set within Sydney’s Barangaroo Reserve that Glossies created for their long-term client Myer.

Set in the cavernous, subterranean surrounds stood two endlessly long dining tables draped in crushed grey linens with glowing challis candles – a grand spectacle to be captured and shared. 125 Australian influencers were given a redefined taste of both food and fashion with a swathe of degustation treats. The designed choreographic moments made the most of the vast scale of the environment as well as intimate, close quarter views of Myer’s seasonal looks. The finale saw models kissed with falling rain, symbolic of the approaching autumnal months.

Photography by Jonathan Butler & Peter Bennetts.

Pop Down Bar in Melbourne by DesignOffice // To celebrate the 2014 Eat Drink Design Awards shortlist, DesignOffice created an intimate and immersive temporary “pop down” bar in the basement carpark of Space Furniture’s Melbourne showroom. After walking up a laneway, down a driveway ramp and under a roller door in Richmond, guests arrived at the entrance to the Pop Down Bar. Once inside the central chamber, guests were surrounded by walls of interlocking boards of natural American ash. Behind these timber boards, gold curtains and strip lighting created an intimate glow.

Images courtesy of ArtKvartal.

Door19 Pop up Bar & Club in Moscow, Russia by PH. D // This pop-up restaurant, modern art gallery and a pre-party bar was situated on the top floor of ArtHouse, a new residential building on the 19 Serebryanicheskaya emb., in Moscow’s ArtKvartal on the Yauza river. The best street artists in Moscow and Europe, together with a team at the architectural studio P H. D turned the space into a temporary club which was visited by more than 12,000 people during its 6 weeks of existence.

P H. D studio and its founder, Lana Grineva, approached the design of the 460 sqm penthouse with gigantic 9-meter ceilings as an undone and elusive interior, which – let’s face it – looks mostly kitsch and overdone, but also kinda fun at the same time.

Photography © Annelore van Herwijnen.

Lighthouse Island Pop-Up Restaurant in Amsterdam // Vuurtoreneiland—or “Lighthouse Island”—is a pop-up restaurant conceived by the team behind the restaurant As on UNESCO-protected land. In the summer of 2013, the founders of As, Sander Overeinder and Brian Boswijk, were granted permission to give their pop-up restaurant a trial run. In two weeks, they built a low-impact structure in the middle of a field and set-up their low-tech cooking equipment: a massive grill, a wood-fire and a smoking oven, and a cauldron. The concept was so successful, they booked the rest of the summer season within the first few weeks. Eventually, the city of Amsterdam gave them permission to continue which saw the concept become a permanent fixture on the island. Brilliant.

Photography by Paul Barbera.

The Blocks in Sydney by Studio Toogood for Penfolds // Fairly ambitious, The Blocks’ spatial concept teetered on the fence between an art installation and the subtle luxury of a moody bourgeois restaurant. Set on a piece of Sydney’s best maritime heritage, Pier 2/3 at Walsh Bay, just under the Sydney Harbour Bridge, this kind of hospitality concept was seldom found on this side of Sydney, particularly back in 2012.

Commissioned to present not just the wine but the creative essence of its idiosyncratic makeup, the creative consultancy of Studio Toogood worked with Penfolds to create a beautifully inspired brief: a presentation and ‘sensory experience’ exploring wine and its most elemental qualities. Why? Perhaps to shed light on the fact that crafting wine and food is an art form as any other, but people, being different as we are in character, tend to like what they like based on multiple sensory readings and interests.

Read the full article about this project & see more images here.

Noma Australia Pop-Up Restaurant by Foolscap Studio // Located in Barangaroo’s Anadara building, Noma Sydney Pop-Up occupied a 500sqm space with floor-to-ceiling curved glass windows and water views. Responding to Noma Head Chef René Redzepi’s design brief for something ‘uniquely Australian’, Foolscap created an elemental dining experience inspired by the Australian coastal landscape – the meeting point of land and water and Redzepi’s journey sourcing ingredients along the coastline. After a wildly successful, almost instantly sold-out 10-week pop-up, Noma Australia came to a close on April 2, 2016.

Read the full article about this project & see more images here.

Images courtesy of Foolscap Studio.

Wulugul Pop-Up Project at Barangaroo by Foolscap Studio // Foolscap’s Wulugul Pop-Up elevated simple natural materials into a world-class public space during the course of 10 months. The space was made up of an undulating facade constructed from specially engineered recycled cardboard tubes and sustainable local plywood that lined the entire 170m Barangaroo South waterfront at ground level. The design concept was inspired by the landscape, topography, cliffs and beaches found along Sydney’s Harbour.

Read the full article about this project & see more images here.

Photography © Sean Fennessy.

Lexus Design Pavilion 2016 by Studio Etic // Speaking of cardboard tubes… In collaboration with Joost Bakker and Henry Wilson, Emilie Delalande of Studio Etic responded to the theme of ‘Anticipation’, inspired by Lexus’ activation at Milan Design Week 2016. The ‘Birdcage’ enclosure at the Melbourne Cup Racing Carnival intended to incarnate the Japanese luxury car manufacturer’s commitment to excellence in design as a driver of innovation and the evolution of a new sense of luxury. Humble cardboard tubes were inserted within the steel framed structure, proving texture, warmth and a sense of understated elegance, and a sensitivity for sustainability that’s so often overlooked at f*ck-off corporate events on steroids such as this one.

Related: Lexus – An Encounter with Anticipation by Formafantasma at Milan Design Week 2016.

Photography © Zach Hone.

Happier Café Paper Space in Taiwan by JC Architecture // Still on the topic of cardboard tubes, JC Architecture imagined this temporary space as an art installation for a short-term six-month tenancy. Paper became an ideal material for allowing the users to express, build, and adjust the environment according to their mood.

Large paper rolls created a time machine installation, forming walkways, niches, and intimate spaces for coaching sessions, gatherings and relaxation. The cafe was designed as an open counter where users picked up their snacks and prepared their drinks, trusted to pay and collect their own change. This approach enabled sharing of responsibility and maintenance of the space to the whole community – an overall feeling that directly connected the people and space together. Let’s just hope things didn’t get really disgusting and messy like in a student share house. #justsayin.

Read the full article about this project & see more images here.

Images courtesy of Cathedral Group.

The Movement Cafe in London by Morag Myerscough // British designer and artist Morag Myerscough used the tweets of poet Lemn Sissay to create the bold graphics surrounding this temporary cafe in London’s Greenwich. The cafe was commissioned by developer Cathedral and constructed in just 16 days to coincide with the start of 2012 Olympic Games in London. The result of a public art collaboration between Myerscough, and Olympic Poet and prolific tweeter Lemn Sissay, the brightly painted words on the facade spelt out phrases tweeted by Sissay. The outdoor amphitheatre seating area provided a contemplative, sheltered place of respite for commuters and visitors to Greenwich. The structure of the building was made from plywood, scaffolding and shipping containers, while all the furniture was made by Myerscough and Luke Morgan from reclaimed laboratory tops.

Images courtesy of DOSIS. Photography by Iwan Baan & John Porral.

Second Dome in London by DOSIS // Second Dome was a pneumatic living structure designed by the emerging Madrid-based architecture practice DOSIS for creative workspace provider Second Home. On 1 October 2016, Second Dome was inflated in London Fields in East London to host free community events for local families and children, included animation workshops, film screenings, pinata-designing and science experiments.

This reconfigurable space can transform within minutes from a single 65 sqm bubble to a multi-room structure with over 400 sqm and 8 meters high. No other type of structure can be assembled so quickly while delivering the capacity to span large areas with a thickness of less than a millimetre. It is a technologic artefact that automatically responds to wind and pressure and that needs extremely low quantities of energy for fabrication and assembly.

Photography by Marco Canevacci, Jelte Keur & Maria Purik.

Loud Shadows Temporary Bubble Pavilion in Amsterdam by Plastique Fantastique // While we’re on the topic of pneumatic architecture, LOUD SHADOWS is an amalgamation of performances, music, dance and architecture, installed in Terschelling, The Netherlands. “The architecture of Plastique Fantastique is monumental, yet mobile, soft and transparent. It’s ephemeral skin influences the environment as much as its inner space offers a lucid view outwards,” said the architects.

Read the full article about this project & see more images here.

Images courtesy of Buro Ole Scheeren. Photography © Piyatat Hemmatat.

Archipelago Cinema in Thailand by Buro Ole Scheeren // This spectacular floating auditorium was created for Thailand’s Film on the Rocks Festival. Designed by German-born and Beijing-based architect Ole Scheeren, the raft was built out of recycled materials as a series of individual modules, allowing the unit to be flexible for future use. Surrounded by momentous rocks rising out of the sea with inky dark water reflecting light off the screen, this pop-up cinema offered a complete submersion with both the natural landscape and the cinematic experience. Genius.

Read the full article about this project & see more images here.

Photography © Nick Hughes / Yellowtrace.

Gumtree Garden Pop-Up Bar in Sydney Designed by Yellowtrace // The Gumtree Garden pop-up bar took place in Sydney over just 4 nights in November 2013. This very special pop-up bar was built in less than 48 hours, featuring items sourced on Gumtree in the local Sydney area. Studio Yellowtrace (wait a minute guys – that’s me!) created 5 different “sets” inspired by some of the styles available on Gumtree: Palm Springs, Mid Century, Country Kitchen (the bar), Victorian, late 70’s / early 80’s, and of course the outdoor laneway. We sourced a whole bunch of weird and wonderful things – everything you might expect to find in a bar, and some things you might not, like a horses head, wheelbarrows, sculls and prams. The whole process took three months to design and plan, followed by really intense bursts of sourcing and purchasing trips.

Read the full article about this project & see more images here.

Photo courtesy of Lexus Australia. Photography by Chloe Paul.

Lexus Design Pavilion 2014 by Mim Design // The flurry and excitement of the Melbourne Cup and its illustrious ‘Birdcage’ is an experience unsurpassed. In designing the Lexus Design Pavilion, Mim captured this thrill and exhilaration within their interior concept which gradually revealed the drama of the two-storey fitout. Each surface was a story of colour, movement, light, texture and luxury. A sensory experience, Mim’s response played with perceived light to transform flat surfaces into dynamic planes, complete with THAT floral ceiling by Joost Bakker.

Read the full article about this project & see more images here.

Photography by Earl Carter.

Lexus Design Pavilion 2015 by Mim Design // In their second consecutive collaboration with Lexus, Mim Design chose to meld sculpture and luxury into a sensory feast at the world famous Melbourne Cup Carnival. The 2015 pavilion offered guests an all-encompassing visual experience via a textural interior of green hues, reflectivity, timber verticality and floral growth. These elements combined to reflect the luxurious and aspirational experience, for which Lexus is known.

Images courtesy of Joanna Laajisto.

‘Dining by Still Water’ Pop-Up by Joanna Laajisto for Helsinki Design Week // Back in 2013, interior architect Joanna Laajisto was invited to design a private pop up dining space for the Helsinki Design Week. With Finnish luxury being one of the core focuses of the festival, Laajisto explored the idea of luxury in today’s society. After contemplating what luxury meant to her, Laajisto drew inspiration from her childhood memories spent at her family’s cottage by the lake in Finland’s countryside. The dining space was located at the Old Customs Warehouse; an old, romantic building that dates back to 1901. With church like arches and brick walls, Laajisto wanted to keep the design very streamlined and minimal.

Read the full article about this project & see more images here.

Photography © Nick Hughes/ Yellowtrace.

Incredible Pop-Up Restaurant at Circolo Marras during Milan Design Week 2016 // Some people and some spaces just know what’s up. Antonio Marras is one of those people, and his courtyard, retail space and gallery in Milan are always a joy to visit in its over-the-top bonkers amazing glory of the unique Italian variety. During Milan Design Week 2016, Marras transformed one of the rooms into a space that surprised and delighted to the point it literally made me squeal. Yiew! At first, I had no idea what I was looking at. I was simply losing my shit and loving everything to bits – the eclectic collection of furniture, extraordinary styling of every single table – each one unique and beautiful in its own right, the backlit wall made of vintage windows and doors, the oversized illuminated images of elderly locals which absolutely stole my heart. I was loving it all, and feeling overjoyed that such unexpected beauty could be discovered during my favourite week of the year. Later on, I realise this space was actually a temporary restaurant that served regional Sardinian food, a place where Marras is from.

Are you dealing? Because I was not.

Read the full article about this project & see more images here.

Photography © Nick Hughes/ Yellowtrace.

Pop-Up Restaurant at Circolo Marras during Milan Design Week 2017 // This year, Antonio Marras took things up a notch by transforming the same space you see above into another pop-up restaurant that quite literally made me cry. Wowee! Running for the duration of Milan Design Week 2017, the restaurant paid homage to the early 20th-century female botanist, Eva Mameli, who was the inspiration behind Marras’ last winter collection. Literally dying!

Discover More Unbelievable Awesomeness from Milan Design Week 2017 in our Comprehensive Milan E-Report.

Images courtesy of of Gloss Creative.

2016 MYER Atelier Marquee at Melbourne Cup Carnival by Gloss Creative // Reminiscent of a European atelier, last year’s Myer Marquee had a refined edge, inspired by the finer things in life. ‘By Appointment Only’ took its audience on an imagined fashion fantasy, their powerful experiences played out and shared on social media. The industrial steel mesh and enormous soft velvet walls were bathed in the palest blush pink in a scene that was both Modern and Luxurious. An elevated one level floor plan held new charm for guests with its black architectural lines and internal black framed windows reminiscent of exclusive European atelier salons. Hawt!

Photo © Nick Hughes/ Yellowtrace.

The Sign in Dinner Show Pop-Up Dining at Ventura Lambrate during Milan Design Week 2014 // Sometimes all a space needs is a whole bunch of blue shirts hung from the ceiling to make an impact and completely transform the experience into something memorable and special. This pop-up restaurant by Mascha van Wely and Piet Bergman served dinner at a disused warehouse space at Ventura Lambrate during Milan Design Week 2014, remaining as one of my favourite random Milan memories.

See more of our Highlights from Milan Design Week 2014 here.

Photography by Kristoffer Paulsen & Linsey Rendell.

Broadsheet Pop-Up Restaurant in Melbourne by Therefore Architecture // Therefore worked closely with branding agency The Company You Keep to develop and refine the concept for this pop-up restaurant. The brief called for a design which pinpointed elements of Melbourne’s best hospitality offerings, and while taking cues from more permanent venues, allowed the flexibility to work as an 8-week pop-up. The design solution centred around the simplicity of the palette, maximising the use of those materials which required less finishing or fixing in order to exploit construction efficiencies.

Photography by Haydn Cattach.

Filter in Melbourne’s CBD by DesignOffice // Located in a disused office building in Melbourne’s CBD, Filter was a temporary destination for premium filter coffee and smørrebrød. After removing the existing shell’s suspended ceiling, a coffered concrete soffit was revealed to inform the insertion of a simple screen of tonally washed timber veneers. Providing tangible scale, these panels slotted together to define a rectilinear footprint framed by the screen and the existing glazing. The re-configurable screen also responded to the building’s existing geometry, establishing a language of 45-degree chamfers which allowed for a repeated motif throughout the interior.

Read the full article about this project & see more images here.

Photography by Fernando Guerra.

The Temporary Andy Warhol Museum in Lisbon, Portugal by LIKEarchitects // The Temporary Andy Warhol Museum was a cultural space within a commercial space, designed to host the exhibition ‘Andy Warhol – Icons | Psaier Artworks and the Factory’. This miniature pop-up museum occupied the atrium of Lisbon’s Colombo Shopping Mall for a period of three months and was used to display 32 original artworks by the late American pop artist.

LIKEarchitects were keen to avoid the neutral white walls of typical gallery spaces and instead opted to build a space using some of the everyday household objects that Warhol showcased in his paintings. Using 1,500 metal paint cans, Portuguese studio built a sequence of four rooms and organised them thematically. Having received more than 100,000 visitors, The Temporary Andy Warhol Museum has contributed to the dissemination and promotion of art, free and accessible to all visitors.

Photography by Johannes Schwartz.

Temporary Fashion Museum in Rotterdam by Studio Makkink & Bey // From 13 September 2015 until 8 May 2016, this temporary museum took place within Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam. The largest gallery in the Temporary Fashion Museum was devoted to a series of unique collections, from the private and professional to the public and commercial. The item spanned private haute couture collection of Eva Maria Hatschek, commercial archives in the form of a vintage store assembled by Ferry van der Nat, with iconic pieces from the history of Dutch and international fashion. Visitors could choose how they wished to experience these displays. Depending on their condition and their status, some of the pieces were able to be touched, tried on and even purchased.