Urbantainer

The Seoul based consultancy use the industrial infrastructure of their home town in many of their projects, incorporating shipping containers, cranes and water tanks into their concepts.

The consultancy’s name also reflects their work; combining ‘urban’, ‘container’ and ‘entertainer’ as they create spaces for social interaction, giving subcultures and brand cultures a place within the city.

They have worked with Adidas on many projects; with a number of highly immersive launches and celebrations of the brand’s clothing and footwear lines.

For the 40th anniversary of Adidas’ Superstar sneaker, their concept is industrial yet refined, with lots of different spaces to explore the life and culture of the product.

Other projects use highly creative ways to communicate the technology behind the collections, with the effective use of light, within dark environs intensifying the visitors experience, as seen in their Climachill project for Adidas. Their work for Adidas continues to flourish with brand collaborations such as their project for Kasina with an energetic interior concept that mirrors the exterior architecture of the building and “No Second Guessing” an Adidas Originals exhibition with a pop-up shop, which made great use of the industrial space and used time relevant media and props to tell a engaging memory evoking story, creating strong connections with their audiences.

Naver App Square’ is an offline space for experiencing smart phone applications by Naver.com, Korea’s biggest online portal site. With everything made of cardboard the concept is incredibly low tech; the simplicity encouraging visitors to focus on the products demonstrated, as well as creating intrigue in the pop-up’s paper design.

A defunct shipping yard was the scene for the Nike Platform project in Istanbul. Carefully choreographed to include spaces for a pop up store, an open bar, a concert space and a DJ booth in the crane, it looks decidedly un-designed, yet über cool.

For the Common Ground mall in Seoul, two hundred recycled shipping containers were taken from the quayside to revitalise an area of unused land in the middle of the city. Though one of the consultancy’s more permanent projects, the mall has been designed to be rearranged or transported to another location if needs be.

High or low tech, Urbantainer is equally adept at creates some amazing experiential spaces. Many of their projects may be temporary, but the concepts, attention to detail and execution is second to none.

If you want to know more, contact Younjin Jeong or Jiwon Baik who founded the company in 2009.