The Power Station of Art (PSA) in Shanghai is the first modern art museum in China that opened to the public. We have collaborated once with Blacksheep Espresso in the spring of 2018 designing a pop-up coffee shop, and this time’s commission if for their permanent store.
Unlike the conventional museum coffee shop set up, the middle of our site is pierced by a corridor connecting the exhibition area and the rooftop terrace; the border between “inside”and “outside” is blurred. And rather than a coffee shop, this café is more like a part of the customers’ walking path to and from the terrace. Taking the site condition into consideration, we hope to design something that can be distinguished from a traditional store – like a bench on the street, passersby could sit down casually as they encounter it, without any pressure or obligation.
Instead of forcing a “shop”in the middle of the “street”, we designed the center piece furniture with only 18mm standard-sized plywood boards, stacked into 10cm thick planes. The interlocking of these planes is not only structural, but it also forms a large scaled furniture. We hope this abstract and relaxed image would encourage more possibilities of actions and functions.