Project Oumuamua

Smack in the summer of 2019, Oumuamua landed in Amsterdam Noord. A strange and temporary creature, no one quite knew what it was. A bar? A restaurant? A club? Workplace, expo, stage? Instead of boxing it in in definition, we decided to celebrate. All of the above!

Named for a comet that traversed our universe in 2017, originating from another galaxy and continuing on through another one still, it bore the traditional Hawaiian name for ‘Messenger from afar’. And we let I guide us beyond the space we knew.

How to design for the temporary without succumbing to the clichés — plywood! Second hand furniture! — of all the pop-up spaces that litter Amsterdam North? How to to make it cosy, yet still multifunctional? We contrasted the original wooden roofing with a spacy, seemingly liquid, mixed cast epoxy floor. Three extraterrestrial objects, a pyramid, obelisk and monolith strategically marked, connected and divided the space and its functions. Furniture and mobile walls filled with earthly plants orbited around these cosmic solids to allow for infinite layouts, while programmable LEDs lit up the sky against the wooden beams.

Besides designing the space, Beyond Space and Space Encounters initiated and funded Oumuamua out of a deep love for nightlife and adventure.