Launched during the London Design Festival and serving ‘the best tinned seafood in the world,’ tincan is a six month pop-up restaurant project in Soho by AL_A, supported by DuPont Corian.
While designing a new cultural centre in Lisbon, the AL_A team discovered a former fishing tackle shop, which was transformed into a tiny, vibrant restaurant serving only tinned seafood. What started as lunch quickly became an idea, and subsequently a new project.
Tincan elevates the tin to an object of desire in an environment designed by AL_A, which offers 30 different tins, all of the highest quality seafood, to eat in the restaurant or to buy in the shop. The idea is very compelling: no kitchen, the finest tinned seafood delicacies, super healthy, and great graphics with the tin as the hero.
DuPont Corian features strongly as the primary surface in the space. It has been expertly fabricated to create interior wall cladding which is fitted with pegs to display a variety of can designs from around the world. DuPont Corian also forms the sleek bar top in the restaurant which has been invisibly integrated with wireless charging technology for smartphones from Powermat, compliant with the standards of the Powers Matters Alliance.
The colour of DuPont Corian chosen for tincan is new Deep Nocturne, an ultra jet black that creates a striking contrast to the iconography of the packaging on display. This is one of several new dark hues made with DeepColour Technology, a patent-pending manufacturing process developed by DuPont which enables the creation of dark solid surfaces offering deeper, more intense and durable colour, improved wear performance, and easier fabrication and fitting.
Amanda Levete, founder of AL_A comments: “The more we looked at the space the more ambitious we got about how we were going to display things. We can’t, as architects, come in and paint the walls black, we have to do something a bit special. So we called in all our collaborators. The new deep black of Corian made an absolutely perfect backdrop.”
