Vegan Café, London.
Currently on Site.
We are currently transforming a space in London Bermondsey. The space has been vacant for some time, since the hair salon that used to operate from this place had left, leaving the street unoccupied. The space will be turned into a new vegan café and gallery and will include a kitchen that supplies daily meals to several children's nurseries. With little infrastructure in place, most on the available budget had to go into basic things, such as plumbing, a staircase, a kitchen and some overall restructuring. We 'excavated' a fairly large but hidden, boarded up loft space to be used as a gallery space. Rather than squeezing tiny sanitary facilities in, to maximise customer space (and turn-over), we dedicated a good chunk of space to sanitary facilities to commit to a cafe that will be accessible to all. The core of the project was undertaken during the hight of the second national lockdown during the COVID_19 pandemic, prompting us to devise completely new methods of running a side largely remotely and yet retaining an element of life engagement through telephone conversations, messages, video updates and pavement planning and design meetings. Severe supply problems caused by a combination of Brexit and supply chain problems due to the pandemic prompted us to re-design the cafe several times over, sometimes from one day to the next, as materials that were promised did not materialise. It has taught us to let go of some design ambitions and remain flexible and responsive to day-to-day changes. It has also prompted us to rethink how we might engage with material flows in the future.
Posted May 2021.