A pop-up café with clever perspective tricks

A café in Hackney offers a playful take on the pop-up, manipulating perspectives to make it seem larger than its true dimensions.

The Milk Tea & Pearl café is a colourful addition to the Boxpark temporary shopping centre, which is made from shipping containers.

Architect Yaojen Chuang has used optical illusions to achieve a spacious and welcoming café. Even in the tight space, Chuang has achieved two unified but distinct looks, with bright colours adding plenty of personality to the sleek white walls. The front half of the container rocks a ‘beach hut’ look, with blue timber slats and carnival lights, while the tea bar has a simpler feel with luminous yellow spots spread throughout the space.

Furniture is kept equally minimal, with wall-mounted tables and slimline stools adorning one side of the café; again, the furniture is blue and white, with the blue trimming echoing the slats running through the container.

The perspective tricks are particularly ingenious, with the repeated slats covering the four walls of the container, forming into chevron-like shapes on the ceiling, giving the café the illusion of height.

Take a closer look at the café here.