Embolao
mecanismo was looking to create Embolao in Madrid, Spain to be a place of easy interaction while creating an area that would be attractive enough to take pictures for social media platforms.
Embolao’s origin is directly in the morphology of the base product, the ‘egg-waffle’ dough. The egg-waffle is cooked on a hot griddle, a special frying pan with small round cells. The griddle is set on hot coals in the fire, while the batter is poured over the special frying pan and heated; small ovals of egg waffles are formed. For this project, we directly transformed the dough ‘Embolada’ to the architectonic concept.
Embolao is located in the Chueca neighborhood, in downtown Madrid. Embolao is based on the concept of ‘take-away’ street food. The surface of the local is 15m2 and it also has a utilities basement for personal use.
Embolao, has an architectonic system that is applied to the surrounding of the local, creating a distinctive and recognizable area due to the resembling spheres that were easily placed. For this, we used a prefabricated type of object which is decontextualized and part of the mechanism.
Since our architectonic objective consisted in transforming drastically our culinary concept and creating Embolao, we therefore decided to design a space surrounded by a diameter of 8cm plastic balls, that were inserted on a black panel, that works as the support base, and which portrays the white plastic balls perfectly since they stand out on the black background. In this way we conformed an attractive spot, which was quick and uncomplicated to embed.
In order to complete the ‘Embolao’ world, we decided to use a 5mm thickness black rubber floor. The ‘gummy’ effect of the floor made the vibe and perception of the customer to be more enjoyable.
All the activity of the shop takes place around a table/counter on which the dough is cooked and all the products and toppings are displayed.
Design: mecanismo
Photography: courtesy of mecanismo
