Folk was invited on a pro bono basis by the Centre for Contemporary Photography to create a pop-up café and social gathering space for Photobook Melbourne. With an open brief, yet modest budget, Folk set out to develop an installation that was playful and expressive.

The popularity of the pop-up often misses the opportunity to look beyond the immediate, to the continuing life cycle of a project. This project presented an exciting opportunity to design for temporary as well as future use, using waste materials that would have otherwise gone to landfill and also unused packing materials that were available on hand to contribute to the ongoing discussion around sustainable design.

Inspired by the challenge to create a gathering space with limited resources Folk’s ingenuity was sparked by a visit to site in the midst of preparations for an exhibition. By unpacking and exploring the contents of the CCP’s storeroom, they found materials that could be reappropriated for their temporary proposal, only to be later returned back to CCP for their original purpose for packing materials or kept as furniture. Therefore challenging the efficiency of material usage in a temporary design.

Rolls of bubble wrap, discarded plastic, packing materials and shredded paper were reappropriated to create giant pillows: islands to sit on, to converse, drink and read. The recycled materials are visible through a wrapping of transparent builder’s plastic, articulating the wastefulness of pop-up culture and the potential to use this platform as a way to test ideas and develop design processes that respond to sustainability.

Photo: CCP