CAN COFFEE Coffee.SHANGHAI – Commissioned by Indefinite Company, MAS is ready to do space design at No.247 Yanping Road, Shanghai. As we defined the space as “expressing in a convenient, inclusive, familiar and futuristic way”, the concept of the future convenience store in the community began to be born at the right moment.
Architizer chatted with the Chief Designer from MAS to learn more about this project.
Architizer: What inspired the initial concept for your design?
MAS: In order to make coffee available at anytime and anywhere, Indefinite Company is trying to integrate coffee into daily life in the form of aluminum cans. When COFFEE has become a way of life, “CAN COFFEE” has become a daily occurrence in the streets and lanes of Shanghai.
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What do you believe is the most unique or ‘standout’ component of the project?
Taking inspiration from the ticket machine at the convenience store, the designer makes the taking-order machine the focus of the overall space design, and disassembles and reassembles the old bill printer to expose the internal working structure of the machine to return to the original state of the machine. Therefore, the trap of consumerism occurs. People shuttling in the city return to their most natural living state.
© MAS
What was the greatest design challenge you faced during the project, and how did you navigate it?
The design of the façade was limited by local regulations, and several rounds of revisions were made to finalize the current state.
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How did the context of your project — environmental, social or cultural — influence your design?
In the old blocks of Yanping Road, there are some old Shanghai-lander who have lived for decades, as well as many young people. In such a fashionable and inclusive area, people come to realize the resonance of their lives.
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What drove the selection of materials used in the project?
We deconstructed the vending machine in our daily life and turned it into an installation design in the space, which directly exposes the internal box structure and expresses the most original functional unit of the selling cargo plane. Inside the box, we tried a new material. The folding aluminum alloy sheet is illuminated with light and shadow, which bring out the best in each other.
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What is your favorite detail in the project and why?
In the closed space in the back half, we used mirrors to tile the walls to extend the overall space. The installation mirror is inspired by the convex mirror in the convenience store, which presents a psychedelic and romantic atmosphere. Customers like to take pictures here.
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How important was sustainability as a design criteria as you worked on this project?
Under the current focus on the reuse and sustainability, we have a dialogue between new language and old language, which means that we embrace cold metal as well as accept time’s pass. The combination between the old and the new represents a friendly meeting of the present and the future.Taking inspiration from the ticket machine at the convenience store, the designer makes the taking-order machine the focus of the overall space design, and disassembles and reassembles the old bill printer to expose the internal working structure of the machine to return to the original state of the machine.
© MAS
© MAS
Team Members
王佳鹏 Pink Wang / 赵紫薇 ViVi
Products / Materials
Stainless Steel, Stone materials, Terrazzo
For more on CAN COFFEE Coffee.SHANGHAI, please visit the in-depth project page on Architizer.
CAN COFFEE Coffee.SHANGHAI 
