Boxed up: Temporary bar brings light on a budget

Porto, Portugal – A pop-up bar has been built with a previously unexplored building material: IKEA storage boxes.

Local architects Diogo Aguiar and Teresa Otto used 420 IKEA boxes to build the Temporary Bar for the Associação de Estudantes da Faculdade de Arquitectura in just in one week. Students from the Oporto School of Architecture also lent a hand with the project.

During the day the bar is a closed unit constructed of the multiple white cubes. By nightfall, the front wall partly opens to reveal the bar. Inside this bar is luminous, dynamic lighting that changes with the DJ’s set list. Responding to music, these lights transform the façade at night with blue and red hues.

Read more on innovative collaborations in our report on the new Brandtocracies era.