Tiendas Paniqueso 2011 - Yemail Arquitectura

Project Details

Paniqueso Stores 2011

DESCRIPTION

Paniqueso is a bakery and production facility located inside a chain supermarket. The project occupies a 35-meter-long strip divided into three zones, each associated with a different type of product offered in the store: delicatessen, ready-to-eat products, and bakery goods. These three parallel bands intersect to form a shared activity zone—production, display, sales, and consumption—at the center of the project. This node also connects to the rear area, which houses a complex bread and food production facility.

The project has been developed through the following parameters:

A Bastard Space

For some reason, we feel part of a generation that inherited a certain disdain for this kind of architecture found in large commercial surfaces. Perhaps because it seems to represent the opposite of public expression and popular participation; we are not entirely sure. What is clear is that, for a significant part of the profession, this type of space has often been seen as synonymous with architectural perversion precisely because it is so generic, easy, brightly lit, and colorful.

Over time, however, we have learned to look at all of this more optimistically and to recognize something appealing in that image. Perhaps because it feels familiar to the atmosphere of Richard Hawley’s album covers, to the fictional narratives of Venturi and Scott Brown in Las Vegas, or—closer to home—to the ordinary yet highly effective atmosphere of informal commerce in a city like Bogotá.

The Indeterminacy of the Public within the Generic

Designing a commercial space requires guarantees of technical performance and the rational use of every square meter in relation to the client’s expectations of profitability—in this case, a fully local industry seeking to compete with multinational brands, another condition that attracted us to the project.

Our point of departure was a strategic spatial question: what opportunities emerge from the coexistence—without continuity, but also without conflict—between a space with a very clear program, the supermarket, and another that seeks to reproduce the indeterminacy of public space and the familiarity of the domestic realm?

Within the formal “aridity” of the chain supermarket, we wanted to qualify the presence of the bakery by accepting the risk of making design decisions guided by intuition and the remixing of images. In other words, we intensified the space with more color, more forms, and a series of technical and relational devices that transpose external logics—the public and the domestic—into the project, potentially leading toward something unexpected.

A Colony of Vintage Robots

The project is inhabited by 24 species of objects conceived as an object family. They form a family because they share common formal and material traits while remaining flexible and multiple in their modes of use. From display units that move along the aisles to tables that unfold to present the day’s specials, this colony of “pet furniture” explores ways of transmitting trust, emotion, and surprise to users, enabling multiple actions and different forms of occupation.

The image of these objects emerges from a hybrid between the anecdotal and the tangible. On the one hand, they reproduce the physiognomy of a robot, referring to the imaginary of a machine programmed for service and reciprocity. At the same time, they establish a kinship with the bakery equipment installed in the technical area—slicers, ovens, proofing chambers, and mixers. At their smaller scale, the furniture appears as an extension of production into the sales space, and vice versa.

Reclaiming the Domestic

We designed a ceiling with a variable section as a geometry complementary to the continuity of the floor. A sequence of fifteen folded bands takes on an orienting role within the space, identifying different zones through colored skylights and functioning as “scent equalizers” connected to the ovens to extract and distribute the smell of fresh bread. At the same time, the geometry occupies the space through contrast and controls the atmosphere in order to reproduce certain qualities associated with domestic environments: warmth of color, spatial enclosure, indirect lighting, and the possibility of offering lounges and different ways of sitting, particularly for regular visitors.

Once again drawing on the scenographic potential of the ceiling—as with the robots—we sought to construct a fictional, illuminated, and performative setting, more open to exchange and to the possibility of losing certainty about what might happen within the space.

Good Morning, Mr. Baker

The project includes two large windows that frame the bakery and kitchen work areas, making them visible from the spaces for consumption and purchasing. This transparency of the production process creates an additional channel for communicating the values of the product. Through direct interaction between bakers and customers, it reinforces an idea of quality based on the combination of high-technology technical processes with artisanal methods of production. At the same time, it continuously brings a population of high-end bakery equipment into view—equipment from which part of the formal language of the furniture was derived.

DETAILS

Use

Bakery

Area

360 m²

Location

Bogotá D. C. – Colombia

Meters above the sea level

2625

Average annual temperature

13.1 °C

Year

2011

Client

Paniqueso Ltda

Design and construction

Yemail Architecture (Oficina Informal) + Wilman Chaparro (Master Builder)

Project team

Antonio Yemail + Juan Carlos Yepes

Graphic system

P576

Photo Credits

Santiago Pinyol

Categories: Production