Text description provided by the architects. Cycle Cycle Mobile Bakehouse is a pop-up café and bakery. The client wanted to explore the relationship between food and land in this project, which perfectly matches the design philosophy of our studio – the connection between land and food, between architecture and people, is essentially the same narrative of “surface” and “essence.” Through contemplation of “local customs” and “human feelings,” we attempt to use architecture to rediscover the connection between people and land, and between people themselves in today’s society.
The overall image of the cart originates from a barn, evolving into a wooden frame structure supporting a rain canopy on top and featuring sunshade panels on the sides, reminiscent of a small grass shelter found in fields where farmers take a break. We used stacked grain sacks as façade, combining the form of bricks and tactile sacks, creating a visually sturdy and approachable effect. The slender openings in the ” stacked grain sacks ” are positioned low, giving people a feeling of peeking out from a barn when communicating. These openings selectively reveal internal activities, giving the cart a distinction between “frontstage” and “backstage.” Meanwhile, the scattered openings on the facade allow natural light to enter the interior, weakening the sense of scale of the building through perspective relationships and element stacking. Raising the sunshade panels and opening curtains creates a semi-private space.
We incorporated some “low-tech” design elements while fully utilizing the structure itself, encouraging people to interact with the cart naturally and casually, enhancing its “pavilion” qualities. For instance, the cart’s chassis is a circle of seats, with grain sacks serving as “cushions,” and trapezoidal columns acting as “armrests,” while still ensuring users’ personal space. The seating also draws inspiration from common rural low stools, with this specific scale, albeit subtle, intended to allow people to experience the design’s intentions during the interaction.
To meet the need for periodic relocation, the cart’s volume and design intent emphasize its public nature and potential for outward expansion, aiming to organically integrate with the urban landscape, even fostering new urban atmospheres. Many aspects of the on-site installation reject standardized quantification; designers and workers work together to find solutions, resulting in a sense of improvisation and temporariness. What best reflects the essence of architecture is not the polished details but rather the raw and uncontrollable materials like the cool mat on the rain canopy or the rough-textured fabric, which always maintain a sense of randomness and better ferment a wild beauty within the natural environment.
