Coffee lovers are getting a special treat at this year’s Melbourne Food and Wine Festival: an urban coffee farm installation made primarily of pallets, which functions as both a temporary coffee shop and a learning experience. Australian design firm HASSELL created the ‘festival hub’ for the two-week annual event, placing it on the red stairs at Queensbridge Square.
While the installation won’t be around long enough for Melbournians to drink coffee grown right there in the middle of the city, it does have more than 120 coffee plants, in pots set into the stacked wood pallets. HASSELL’s Shaun Schroter and Mary Papaioannou told Habitus Living that their aim was to connect coffee consumers to the laborious and resource-heavy processes required to produce the beverage.
Educational signs offer coffee facts, including info on various types of beans and where they’re grown. The temporary cafe was installed in an underutilized area of Melbourne’s South Bank, inviting residents to explore their city in a new way.
“Coffee has become one of those consumables that is linked to a lifestyle experience and very rarely connected to the places of harvest,” says Schroter. “Embedding this narrative into the conceptual story then becomes important because it is a holistic experience.”
