Introduction: Cardboard Cafe
The cardboard cafe is an outdoor installation made of entirely of corrugated cardboard, and at the end of it’s life will be recycled into a new product packaging.
Step 1: Fabrication Techniques
The cardboard cafe was built with a combination of digital and manual fabrication techniques. Many of the tools and fastening systems are borrowed directly from industrial packaging applications.
Step 2: The Landscape
The cardboard cafe is constructed of 410 cardboard boxes which were aggregated into an artificial landscape that incorporated seating, lounging and greenery.
Step 3: The Construction System
The boxes tessellated in plan and contoured in section. The tessellated box pattern compresses and expands to dynamically adapt to different programmatic uses.
Step 4: Landscape Expanded
Denser areas create opportunities for sitting. Expanded areas are inserted with clusters of planted towers, creating a second topographic layer.
Step 5: Program Opportunities
The branching plan encloses nooks and spaces for sitting and lounging, while remaining open to the surrounding flow of pedestrian movement.
Step 6: Bringing It to Life
The cardboard towers’ perforated leaf patterns and live plantings create a vertical flourish above the primarily horizontal, topographical aggregation of cardboard boxes.
Step 7: Cardboard Cafe
The cardboard cafe creates an informal outdoor lounge area, in a busy pedestrian court.