For two consecutive years, Grieve Gillett Architects partnered with the JamFactory to design and construct a temporary installation at multiple locations in Adelaide. The similar but conceptually different installations integrated an exhibition display of the latest in contemporary Australian craft and design, together with a pop-up wine tasting bar.

Simple in form and sympathetic in scale, the minimalist, lightweight yet robust structures both utilised recyclable cardboard building blocks in the form of packing boxes and cylinder tubes, and transformed an everyday product into bespoke elegant design.

From an old ornately decorated theatre to the central thoroughfare of Adelaide Airport, the designs responded appropriately to minimal budgets and specific site constraints, including height, footprint, sightlines and short bump-in timeframes, to create easily constructible and re-locatable structures.

Through consideration of movement patterns, form, light, transparency and repetition of a single material to create visual impact, the installations drew people through and around the space, inviting a sense of discovery and exploration. 

The installations had a deliberate dichotomy in construction, forming a solid enclosure within a larger volume, while openings between the boxes or through horizontally stacked tubes suggested an inherent delicacy and temporary nature within each structure. 

The design team layered meaning within the structures, building both installations completely by hand to reference the craftmanship of the JamFactory, and using a single box or cylinder repeatedly on mass, to symbolise the individual artists who have made the organisation an incubator for creativity, experimentation and development in its past, present and future.