Blind Box Pub
Yan Hu
Can architecture taste? In design, we often use sensory design, but rarely does design mention flavour. When I first thought about the flavour of architecture, I thought it was ridiculous because we can’t really taste it! But that doesn’t mean we can’t feel architecture through our sense of taste.
When I thought about how to make people feel the flavour of architecture, I came up with a method – associative sensing – whereby other senses are translated into flavour through transitions between the senses. So I used a tool to extract the visual elements of the building: colours, textures, etc. and used the same tool to measure some fruits, and after comparing the results, we came up with the “taste” of the building.
Obviously there were some problems, for example I could not extract all the visual elements of the building, but by extracting the main features we were able to get the most distinct flavour of the building. This corresponds to the different flavours of food.
Street artists remind me of a very famous Chinese toy, the blind box.
What is a blind box? It is more of a form than a toy. It often has a whole set of items, hand-me-downs, daily necessities, food, and things like that. This whole set is divided into many components. You are able to know what’s in the set (and there are some hidden items that aren’t known) but you don’t know what’s in each component until you open it. This is the blind box.
1. A rotating staircase saves more space and makes the space more airy
2. In order to keep the surprise of customers seeing the stage, this screen ensures that users are not allowed to see the performance stage on their way down the stairs. A screen embedded in the screen provides key information about the day’s Blind Box performance.
3. Due to the uncertainty of the performance format, I chose small tables and chairs that can be flexibly arranged at a later stage, as well as some fixed seats against the wall.
4. Due to the design of the movement, I modified the original exit of the space and used the height difference of the original space as a bar table, so that they could experience the stage closely.
5. The LED screen, which can be lifted, stays in mid-air and blocks people’s view when the performance doesn’t start, but when the performance starts, the screen rises up, like a blind box that has been opened.
6. The stage top can be raised and lowered in small increments, providing more possibilities for performances.
7. The backdrops can be excessively round and straight and can be used to hide equipment and enrich the background.
In order to facilitate changes in the atmosphere of the space according to the form of the performance, lighting and materials are key in determining the final result. In order to change the ambience through lighting, most of the materials were chosen to be highly reflective metals. The use of metal and led screens, as well as the use of lighting, allow for a wide range of possibilities in terms of the ambience of the space.
Through technology such as VR, while waiting to dine, the experiencer can get a sense of what’s going on downstairs through the use of the VR glasses, but in order to retain some of the suspense, the content in the VR glasses is processed. It will intercept the sound of the performer’s movements and mix it with other elements to form a new stage, so that both the diner and the viewer downstairs will see a unique performance just for themselves.
