Selling Kiosk for a local social economy cooperative
At Ibero Puebla, as a Jesuit University, we've been always concerned for the wellfare of the people that doesn't has access to resources or to supports. That's mainly the mission of the Fablab that I lead; but also of the whole institute.
In 2017 IDIT Ibero, local government, and Fablab Puebla launched a program called "Yo compro Poblano". This program was aimed to register local businesses of the city, and give them economical orientation, marketing lessons, selling lessons, digital fabrication courses, etc. So this businesses can improve. In three years we have more than a thousand businesses registered to the program.
This program works with social economy principles, this roots gives importance to collaboration, fair exchange, fair earnings, etc. And the businesses registered to the program are enforced to meet, collaborate and create small networks. In november of 2019, 14 small businesses with products so different (ranging from fried tortillas to cleaning products, and obviously making stop in jewelry and other mexican handcrafts) manage to unite and land an agreement to install a selling kiosk in one of the newest and more crowded plazas in Puebla: Paseo Destino. This plaza is interesting because is a strip mall but also a bus stop, and the buses that comes from that station are mainly, the ones that take to Mexico city airport. Resulting in the plaza having a lot of people walking there.
The space that was given to me to propose a design was 2m x 2m x 2.40m. It was a small space, and it presented a big challenge: How do we create an exhibition space for 14 different companies with products completely differents in such small space?
The upper picture shows our visual proposal. We decided that we wanted to do a dynamic structure based in the simple shape of a square and rectangles. We chose three different sizes that can hold every product even though they were so different. We chose a metal structure for holding all the wood cubes. For the inside and outside we chose policarbonate, a little bit more expensive than acryllic but more resistant. The cubes in the lowest lane will be enclosed with wood for both sides to be a storage facility.
Everything was designed in Rhinoceros, but I also designed a counter and some pieces for 3D printing for mounting the doors in Fusion 360. I also used grasshopper to give me all of the pieces for the boxes and nested them.
A view of the structure in angle to show the doors and orientations of the boxes.
Upper picture shows side view of the project.
This upper view shows the first proposition of lightning for the kiosk. The clients chose to illuminate every cube individually.
A blueprint of the three different sizes of the cubes. The distribution of this cubes and the quantity of each was also decided after studying the needs of each of the 14 companies in the project.
Upper picture shows a blueprint of the different pieces that will be cut on the router.
The upper picture shows the detail of the boxes, every piece for the front side shows the pocket that the CNC Router did.
CNC Router cutting one of the 14 boards.
After the cut we sand every piece and applied varnish.
Even though we worked in late hours of the night, I tried to had fun with the varnish.
The metal structure was cut and assembled by hand, no digital fabrication implicated in that.
The wood started to being install on the metal structure.
Also the policarbonates were installed as doors.
We installed lights individually in every cube.
The upper picture depicts a counter that was designed and cut on CNC Router too. The pictures below shows the final result, with the products of the 14 companies. This has been one of the most challenging products because it was very big and the details were worked on site, because of the mall regulations every on site work has to be done after 10 pm, so for a week I didn't slept but few hours, but I'm really proud of the final result.
