A social project: Bakkie040 is a socially engaged coffee place. Initiated by Springplank, Trudo (social housing company) and Rotary Club Eindhoven - Eeckaerde, Bakkie040 propose a fresh start to homeless people by offering a job together with a temporary home. Bakkie040 is built in 3 containers and placed as an addition to Plug-in City (PiC) Plug-in city is a city in motion, inspired by the first concept from Archigram, it is designed and built by the community, with the idea of being able to be easily dismantled and relocated. Thus, Bakkie040 was designed with a similar mindset. The design allows the 3 containers to be easily detached and transported separately elsewhere. 

Hyperlocal: The scale of the project allowed Bygg A&D to handle every aspect of both the design and the production. By involving the skills of the community, producing everything in PiC’s workshop, and building mainly from the left-over materials gathered in the neighborhood, the project became ‘hyperlocal’. While the design team was drawing, a first team of ‘gatherers’ collected the materials to create a feedback loop adjusting the design to the material. We gathered the windows from the refurbishment of a foodcourt happening nearby, we collected a large amount of timber and plywood from an exhibition also 2 blocks away and we received 2 tempered glass panels, used for the awning, from an old show at the art gallery on the other side of the street. 

Design choices “We use everything we have, more labor work, less new materials, privilege screws to glue.” The walls and ceilings are paneled with reclaimed plywood fastened by long strips fixed with visible screws. All panels are easily removable, replaceable and, why not, reusable for a third life. The concrete-like floor, made of large panels of cement & wood fiber, calms the strong pattern of the old yellowed plywood. 

The uniform color of the fabric on the back wall give an intimate and soft touch to the space and come to complete the relationship between the natural wood and the mineral floor. We used our 3D printer to produce locally, with organic-based plastic PLA, the light holders that gently letting naked light bulb providing a dimmable light. The design of the furniture is a response to maximizing the use of the leftover from the production. By designing table and chairs from small repeated parts the CNC was able to cut all the parts from all the pieces lying around the workshop .

The design is inspired by the Savonarola chair, named after Dominican priest Girolamo Savonarola who preached all his life for simplicity and frugality, giving up all the unnecessary superfluous. Ironically his name was given to the thing that he probably would have hated the most, a chair full of ornaments, a symbol of social status and luxury. With this collection we play with this ambiguity, offering a chair giving a lord's posture to every user, democratizing its social status, while being naked of ornaments and superfluous.