Design Challenge and Design Ideas

“In light of the well-known hospitality restrictions of 2021, the design team explored how an existing doorway on Hill Street could present an opportunity for serving street food with a unique and entertaining identity that encouraged people to re-visit the empty and pandemic stricken city centre.

Occupying an empty doorway with a type of ‘pop up’ architecture suggested the most practical and cost efficient solution to brief. Whilst this approach removed the need for any alterations to the outside or inside of the building, the challenge then was to create something that was beautifully simple yet robust and practical enough to be pushed into place by hand.”

How the brief was fulfilled

The design took the form of a Kiosk that fills the open doorway and immediately addresses Hill Street. The colour, proportion and rhythm of the kiosk all take its cue from Crown Creative’s branding which draws upon the architecture of traditional telephone boxes, post boxes and even carefully curated film scenes (see Wes Anderson’s ‘Grand Budapest Hotel’) that have a distinctive visual narrative. After falling eerily dormant, the Toast Office seems to have resuscitated Hill Street by drawing people in their (socially distant) hundreds back to the heart of the city centre. Lunch has now become somewhat of an uplifting event on Hill Street, creating a hint of a continental atmosphere with a distinctive Belfast twist, reminding us all of more normal times to come.