The Can

The brief | The CAN To use a derelict area of the building, right next to the main entrance, to bring forward, towards the street, the passion, the love, the heritage, the processes and the identity of the factory and the family. To enhance the processes that run behind the stone walls, creating an innovative space that combines tradition and innovation, re-defining the concept of a canned fish meal. The concept The can| was the baseline and concept to create a restaurant and shop that opens itself to the exterior. With a diagonal that comes from the main entrance’s wall, the intervention in the allocated space is rotated to enhance its depth and capacity, being the central element of the space THE CAN that is, on the inside an industrial kitchen, and an eating counter from the outside. The central stainless-steel element designs and divides the space, being the circulation done around it. On one side the seating area, in the perimeter, wood beams and sticks hold themselves to the stone cladded walls to display the most various and colorful cans produced in the factory. On top of the counter, just hanging below the top of the suspended can with a rolling platform, made out of acrylic and bike chain, connected to a motor that resembles the machines and processes inside the factory and where closed cans are shown to the visitor that can just pick one up, hand it to the Chef and wait minutes for one’s personalized gourmet meal. The CAN acts as a spatial sculpture that projects itself to the exterior and experiment initiator designed to integrate the sales and tasting functions, the new space comes with a central element, created from the traditional can shape, which houses the kitchen / canopy and counter functions. The central tasting area is also marked by the rolling ‘carpet’ element that runs over the counter, where the visitor can choose the canning and deliver it to the chef who will use it to create a gourmet experience - this mobile slide also symbolizes the dynamism of the whole the cannery process. The central balcony defines a central diagonal, which allows the space to accommodate 25 people, both at the counter and at the other tables, to mark the walls of the space. The display area was though to be a game of showing and hiding product, where visitors can slide the wood panels that hand from a steel tube held by the stone walls. The finishes where chosen in order to bring back the Portuguese industrial architecture ‘style’, like the hydraulic mosaic that gently touches the old marble flooring and small rectangular white ceramics with a back top, that where always used before.