The bright young things of Hassell Melbourne have concocted the Urban Coffee Farm and Brew Bar for this year’s Melbourne Food and Wine Festival . Their temporary landscape, representing a terraced coffee plantation and abstract jungle, can be seen along the Red Stairs in Queensbridge Street Square, on the Yarr’s edge.
A Victorian-grown tropical garden has been installed by Warner’s Nurseries, who have supplied over 1200 trees and plants (around twenty-four different species) including 125 coffee trees, demonstrating that it’s possible to achieve a tropical landscape in the Victorian climate. Adding the “hard” landscape elements to the installation are shipping containers, packing crates and pallets used for terracing, seating and sheltering the temporary bar and kitchen facilities.
As well as availability and cost-efficiency, materials from the transport industry are used to remind us of the journey made by coffee beans – from jungle plantation to city cafe. They also play on the idea of the unexpected discovery within a familiar environment: some of the world’s richest coffee beans are grown under the shelter of mountain forest canopies, so it’s possible to stumble across a plantation in a jungle clearing.
Also at play is the idea of the “takeaway” nature of urban coffee culture and, indeed, the transience of this year’s Melbourne Food and Wine Festival , which ends 17 March.
Melbourne Food and wine Festival approached the firm to develop ideas for the centrepiece of the 2013 festival. At the heart of the response by the team of Elliet Spring, Megan Krikstolaitis, Jason Zhou, Brenton Beggs, Andrea Giuradei and Cara Gabrie – is an interest in the exotic geographies of coffee-growing regions. In addition to creating a meadnering public meeting space, they have have sought to bring the story of coffee – so enmeshed in Melbourne urban culture – to life. The installation is not a polished piece of architecture, but rather a rough and ready temporary structure where festival-goers can be momentarily transported by a curious landscape narrative, or simply get a coffee from some of the city’s best baristas.
The Schiavello Construction crew helped the Hassell team building the festival centrepiece from 1,305 raw timber pallets, 175 coffee trees and over 1,000 additional trees and as well as three Port of Melbourne shipping containers, refitted as a bistro and kitchen. Watch a video of the pop-up construction below.
