Plastic Box | Akelarre Supermarket

This project transforms an everyday typology—the supermarket—into a bold aesthetic experience with innovative functionality.

Conceived as a raw concrete envelope, the space is defined by clean lines and geometric volumes that evoke solidity and permanence. The façades, stripped of ornamentation, feature entrances designed as dark portals that heighten the contrast with the illuminated interior, creating a deliberately sensory transition.

The most distinctive feature is the ceiling: a modular surface composed of over a thousand precisely aligned recycled plastic crates. Each crate filters the light, casting geometric shadows that shift throughout the day. This is not merely a symbolic architectural gesture—the crates also serve a practical purpose, housing LED lighting, ventilation systems, and rainwater collection devices.

Steel shelving, polished concrete floors, and sculptural monolithic checkout counters continue the brutalist language, bringing a radically minimalist approach to the interior and creating a sober atmosphere where indirect lighting highlights the products through contrast with their own shadows.

Plastic Box challenges conventional retail norms through an architecture that recycles not only materials, but also uses and meanings. From the ceiling crates to the counters, elements have been salvaged from industrial contexts and reimagined, subverting their original aesthetics and functions.