Pictures of the world's most compact coffee shop,
which recently
hit the streets of New York City. Designed for Illy by self-styled 'artist-architect' Adam Kalkin, it's all packed into a shipping container, but at at the flick of a switch it blossoms into a barista-ready coffee house in just 90 seconds.
Meanwhile in Mexico, Nestle, manufacturers of coffee, chocolate, breakfast cereal and powdered milk, have a fantastic new factory building, designed by Mexican architect Michel Rojkind.
I can't see any actual manufacturing going on in these pics, but it looks like a very pleasant place to sit around on beanbags and shoot the breeze.
At this point I might be expected to take a sideswipe at Nestle about their allegedly imperfect ethical credentials, to counterbablance my praise for their impeccable taste in architecture, but it would probably mean a long visit to the Independent lawyer's office, so why don't I just quietly post this link instead?
And (huzzah!) the Gingerbread Latte season is upon us, though I fear they're really just cinnamon dolce lattes in disguise. Nevertheless, here's the recipe so you can make them all year round.
Kalkin's work on his push-button houses is really impressive and for those of you who are interested in cargotecture (architecture using containers) there are lots more examples out there - check out materialicious, inhabitat, shedworking and treehugger for a start.
Posted by: roger | Saturday, 08 December 2007 at 07:37 PM
Kalkin's work is almost an installation and it actually appeared first at the Vience Biennale. It's a great idea though, the kind of thing that can be plonked down anywhere and then moved about easily as the whim or necessity demands. The kings of this kind of thing are Hybrid Seattle http://www.hybridseattle.com. You should check out their site.
Posted by: Carin | Sunday, 09 December 2007 at 09:16 AM