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.