The Plastic Crate Interior

In this striking interior—designed for a grocery store in Shanghai—the architects transform the most banal of objects, the plastic crate, into a full spatial and aesthetic system, constructing a ceiling, cladding, seating and support infrastructure from stacked, suspended and embedded crates in uniform beige, establishing a modular field of repetition that reads like a tactile grid hovering over the entire space, while the countertops of recycled compressed stone rest on both crates and rugged concrete pillars, creating a deliberate contrast between fragile modularity and raw tectonics, where the soft industrial texture of plastic dialogues with the coarse logic of demolition material, suggesting a collision of value systems: throwaway and permanent, light and heavy, cheap and monumental. This design, by Liu Yichun of Atelier Deshaus, takes the ordinary crate—typically hidden in backrooms or delivery trucks—and elevates it to the status of primary building block, achieving a kind of low-tech monumentality that feels both rigorous and playful, offering an alternative to sleek retail minimalism through an aesthetic of transparency, repetition and friction, where function becomes form, and modular logic becomes poetics. By reclaiming the crate as material and concept, the space invites reflection on consumption, reuse and the silent intelligence embedded in overlooked systems, turning a visit to the shop into an architectural experience of structure, rhythm and texture.