Ephemeral Structures — 2017–2019

01. The partner you bring in when it has to be built

A brand experience is agreed in a meeting and then has to exist, at full size, in a real venue, on a date that cannot move. Between those two moments is where this studio works.

Between 2017 and 2019 ALGAZAL//CO was the execution partner behind more than sixty brand experiences across Brazil — brought in by agencies, producers and fabricators to take an idea that had been sold and make it buildable. Not as a supplier of drawings at the end, but as the partner who sits between the concept and the build and answers the only question that matters once the budget is signed: can this be made, in this place, in the time there is?

02. What that takes

The constraints are not the ones permanent architecture trains you for. Nothing may be fixed to the host building. Everything arrives through a service door and goes up in a night shift. The structure carries crowd loads it will experience exactly once. And the date cannot move, because the event is the date.

So the work runs from the structure to the socket: load paths and anchorage on floors that cannot be drilled, the electrical distribution and ceiling rigging, the fire and evacuation case, the regulatory filings, and the drawing set the fabricator actually builds from. Done well, none of it is visible. The visitor sees a place that looks like the brand and behaves like a building.

03. Rooms, streets, buildings, objects

Some were rooms: Takeda's reception, with its circular red portal cut through the corridor. SPX's navy signage wall and SRM's wave-form stand at XP's Expert. ENEL's meeting room lined in yellow. SAP's interactive room and ZUP's lounge at CIAB.

Some were streets: the Uber Eats activation rebuilt a night market indoors — brick, neon, communal tables, stalls with their own frontage — so that what was being sold was the place rather than the product.

Some were buildings: Sesc Verão's timber pavilions, with stepped decks and planted edges, assembled in a park and used by people who had not come to look at architecture.

And some were objects at the scale of a building: a service station reconstructed indoors for Shell, a circus marquee for Haly's Circus, a mall corridor turned into a government office for Nobody's Looking, a boombox you could climb inside at Rock in Rio.

04. Working with the people who make it

These projects are made by teams. The studio worked alongside the fabricators and producers who build at this scale — CenoIdeias, M|CHECON and NeoPUBLI — and with the agencies who owned the idea: AlmapBBDO, OnzeMC, BMKT, Gaia, TM1, TracyLocke, Bullet and BFerraz. Several of the projects below ran inside larger events, where a single venue holds a dozen brands at once: Expert (XP), CIAB, and three years of Rock in Rio.

05. Clients, 2017–2019

AeC · Albert Einstein · Atlas · Banco24h · Barilla · BMG · Bradesco · Brevicred · Caloi · CFQ · CIAB · Claro · Colgate · Cubo · Diageo · Edwards · ENEL · Expert / XP Investimentos · Facebook · Ford · GM · Globo · GSK · Hyundai · IBM · Invisalign · Itaú · Johnnie Walker · L'Oréal · Loft · Merck · Microsoft · Navi · NeoBPO · Neodent · Nestlé · Netflix · Nokia · Oi · Oncoprod · PAN · Petrobras · Porto Seguro · Raízen · RioMar · Robbyson · Rock in Rio · Saint-Gobain · Samsung · Sanofi · SAP · Sarepta · Sesc · Shell · SPX · SRM · Sulamérica · Takeda · Tegra · Toyota · Uber Eats · Ultragaz · Unimed · Unilever · Vivara · Volkswagen · Votorantim · ZUP

06. Index of images

1. Takeda · 2018. Reception: a circular red portal cut through the corridor, reflected in the polished floor.
2. Uber Eats · 2019. A night street market rebuilt indoors — brick, neon signage, stalls with their own frontage.
3. Uber Eats · 2019. The Glam Makeup station: a lit counter against exposed brick, with a visitor at the screen.
4. Uber Eats · 2019. Long communal tables and neon-framed food stalls along the market aisle.
5. Sesc · 2017 — Sesc Verão. The built timber pavilion with green panels and a stepped deck, seen from the park.
6. Sesc · 2017 — Sesc Verão. The timber deck and planters running between the pavilions, with visitors walking through.
7. Sesc · 2017 — Sesc Verão. Two visitors walking under the timber pergola, between the planted deck and the pavilion wall.
8. ENEL · 2019. A meeting room lined in yellow, with a mezzanine walkway above.
9. Shell · 2018. A service station reconstructed indoors: canopy, pumps and a display car.
10. SPX · 2019 — Expert 2019 (XP). The navy signage wall with pendant lamps and planting.
11. SRM · 2019 — Expert 2019 (XP). An exhibition stand under a blue wave-form ceiling.
12. SAP · 2019 — CIAB. The interactive room, with screens set into a dark wall.
13. ZUP · 2019 — CIAB. A lounge of white moulded chairs and low tables on a blue exhibition floor.
14. Samsung · 2018. A product-launch auditorium with its warm-lit stage and screen wall.
15. CX Experience · 2019. A full auditorium under a red slatted ceiling.
16. Netflix · 2019 — Haly's Circus. A lit circus marquee with a scalloped edge and chase lights.
17. Netflix · 2019 — Nobody's Looking. The signage wall lit in red across the mall corridor.
18. Netflix · 2019 — Nobody's Looking. The green signage wall seen down the length of the corridor.
19. Netflix · 2019 — Nobody's Looking. The installation seen from the mezzanine, green against red.

Nobody's Looking is shown in full on its own page, with the floor plan and stills from the series.