Lucky Mart — Mike Liu

As saturated as Shanghai is with drinking options, when it comes to places that are good for long sessions and late night drinking past 2am, a need for a highball bar was identified. The project required a design that positioned itself as an always available community watering hole that was easy to drop in on the way home.
The conversation surrounded how to distill the allure of late-night snacking into a space that doubles as a community anchor.
From big to small scale : that reliable convenience store that’s open 24/7 to opening that fridge door because you’re feeling snack-ish; the power of light communicates availability and last resort option. The conversation reminisces back to the days of drinking outside convenience stores, where it be ‘FamilyMart Parties’ in Shanghai or ‘Club 7 Parties’ outside 7-Eleven in Hong Kong.

Dealing with the limitations of the space, the design proposed to brand the venue as a convenience store concept, and with highballs as the main offering, this led to the direction of a konbini, which is a Japanese convenience store. FamilyMart, Lawson, 7-Eleven were frequented quite heavily for the duration of this project.
To make the space conducive to street side gathering, the design counter intuitively pushes the facade in to expand the sense of width for the sidewalk. An arduous amount of sourcing went into hunting down the same bricks used to build the city’s public sidewalks, which was applied as the shop floor, as a way to further signify an extension of the street. The broad strokes of a konbini manifested in the large storefront sign, as well as pegboard panels that allowed the display and selling of merchandise and snacks.

Entropy