Geneva-based architect Aurélie Monet Kasisi has designed a mobile stand based on street-food carts to travel around Switzerland as a promotional vehicle for a suicide prevention organisation.
The stand for Stop Suicide is made from a framework of beech rods, containing wooden boxes used to accommodate drawers, cabinets, a cooler and a projector.
A canopy made with material recycled from boat sails protects the stand and its visitors from the weather. Brass-tipped handles at one end and two repurposed wheelchair wheels at the other enable it to be moved around like a wheelbarrow.
"The brief from Stop Suicide was for a multifunctional device that could easily be transported in public spaces, so that Stop Suicide could carry out its various suicide prevention campaign activities throughout different cities of Switzerland," Kasisi told Dezeen.
"From an open-air cinema to a lemonade bar, it is a micro-social platform enabling different events to take place around it: information dissemination, distribution of materials, discussions, workshops, or film projections."
The architect's design was based on street-food stalls and mobile units she had seen on her travels to cities in Africa, South America and Asia.
"The mobile units often used to serve food or sell various goods host a small collective experience within the city," she said. "That is exactly what I wanted the mobile stand to generate in Swiss public spaces."
"I admire the pragmatism and the ingenuity of these mobile units," Kasisi continued. "Just as our mobile stand, they offer cost-effective and efficient solutions for urban installations that appropriate space in an ephemeral way."
Kasisi and her team sourced the components and built the stand in-house. It is designed to make use of simple materials and construction techniques, so that anyone can take it apart and put it back together using brass wing-nut fastenings.
"It was important for us to develop a simple and low-tech construction process that would not require sophisticated tools and skills," she said. "The timber bars are simply screwed together: a technique that also allows easy mounting and dismounting of the whole structure."
"We have also found and collected all the recycled objects needed: the piece of scrap-recycled sail to protect from the sun and the rain and the wheelchair wheels. But the brass fastenings give a precious look to the halved joints."
Photography is by Dylan Perrenoud.
Project credits:
Design: Aurélie Monet Kasisi
Collaborators: Antoine Guay and Jessica Brancato