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thesundaytimes July 22, 2012
Pop & go
The trend of restaurants, malls and even hotels popping
up in temporary venues shows no sign of abating.
HUANG HUIFEN tells you about interesting pop-up
venues to visit around the world
DEVON, ENGLAND
Fans of food celebrity Hugh Fearnley-
Whittingstall’s famed River Cottage tele-
vision series will soon be able to check
into the idyllic Devon farmlands where
the show is set.
From Aug 10 to Sept 7, British-based
roving hotel operator The Pop-Up Hotel
will set up 20 luxurious tents in River
Cottage Headquarters’ sprawling 26ha
farmland in south-western England.
The River Cottage is open only to
pre-arranged visitors. Accommodation
is in canvas tents (right) with rug-strewn
wooden flooring. Deluxe tents have dou-
ble beds, while suites have king-sized
beds and ensuite bathrooms.
Food from the hotel’s restaurant
includes spiced organic lamb with spelt
tabbouleh and mint yogurt, and beet-
root and chocolate brownies. It is man-
aged by Tim Maddams, former head
chef of River Cottage’s Canteen in near-
by Axminster town. Budget about £25
(S$49) a head for lunch, £35 for dinner.
Or take cooking courses such as
pizza-making and fish cookery. These
have to be pre-booked on www.river
LONDON
If you are in London, check out the
Pop-Up Singapore House (Push!), a
two-month arts and culture exhibition
that will transform a three-storey town-
house into a design shop, theatre,
dinner-party venue and cinema.
The art exhibition, organised by Crea-
tive [SIN]ergy, a network for
British-based Singaporean
creatives, will showcase
works by overseas Sin-
gaporean artists including
ceramic artist Dr Wee
Hong-Ling.
Theatre buffs can check
out Rites & Regulations (tick-
ets: £3 or S$6), a play exploring urban life
and funeral practices in Singapore by
Mingyu Lin, a writer with the Royal
Court Theatre’s Unheard Voices Writers’
Programme, and Cui Yin Mok (above
left), artistic director of Platform 65, a
non-profit cultural arts group by Singapo-
MEXICO
Unlike The Pop-Up Hotel which sets up
camp in vacant spaces, Berlin-based
Design Hotels Group creates pop-up
hotels by sprucing up existing hotel spac-
es. In its latest project, the PopUp
Ashram, it transforms a 85-cabana
beachfront property in Tulum, Mexico,
into a seven-week yoga and spiritual
retreat.
New touches include an ocean-facing
yoga studio converted from a thatched-
roof pavilion and a new restaurant con-
cept serving vegetarian cuisine and
healthy smoothies and tonics. The
project offers a wide range of yoga and
spiritual sessions, from hatha yoga to
reiki healing to physic readings.
Accommodation (above right) is in
refurbished cabanas fitted with simple
bedding and mosquito nets, but note
that only 43 cabanas have private bath-
rooms. The rest share two communal
bathhouses.
When: Sept 15 to Oct 27. All retreats
start on Saturdays
cottage.net and cost from £50 a person.
When: Aug 10 to Sept 7
Where: Park Farm, Trinity Hill Road,
Axminster
Getting there: From London, it takes
two hours and 40 minutes by train
from Waterloo station to Axminster
station (www.networkrail.co.uk). It is a
10-minute drive to the farm from
Axminster station
Price: From £495 for a three-night
weekend in a twin-sharing tent
inclusive of breakfast
Info: Go to www.thepopuphotel.com
to book
reans in London.
For foodies, there are two events – a
showdown between a Malaysian and Sin-
gapore supperclub for the best bak kut
teh (£5 a person) and a Hungry Ghost Fes-
tival-themed dinner (£39.60 a person).
There is also a shop carrying works
from Singapore design studi-
os such as Farm and kult3D.
Some items there by inde-
pendent artists, such as
screen-printed tote bags by
national agency Design-
Singapore Council’s associ-
ate Clara Yee (right), cannot
be found back home.
When: Wednesday to Sept 23
Where: 17 Dorset Square
Getting there: Take a tube to
Marylebone or Baker Street stations.
From there, it is a five-minute walk to
Push!
Info: www.popupsingaporehouse.co.uk
Where: Km 4 point 5 Carretera
Tulum-Boca-Paila, Quintana Roo,
Mexico
Getting there: Fly to Cancun and
take a 11/4-hour drive to the hotel
Price: From US$1,435 (S$1,803) for a
five-day retreat which includes
accommodation, daily breakfast, one
dinner session and participation in
group activities and workshops
Info: www.designhotels.com/papaya_
playa_a_design_hotels_project
LONDON AND STOCKHOLM
The Cube by Electrolux takes pop-up din-
ing to a whole new level.
The angular 140 sq m glass structure
containing an 18-seat restaurant has
popped up on the rooftops of London’s
Royal Festival Hall and Stockholm’s
Royal Opera House.The temporary
project is sponsored by Swedish home ap-
pliance manufacturer Electrolux, which
supplies the kitchen equipment.
The London Cube (above), which is
open for dining until Sept 30, offers
sweeping views of Big Ben, Houses of Par-
liament and the River Thames, while its
Swedish counterpart – open till Oct 21 –
overlooks the majestic Stockholm Palace.
The kitchen staff are just as impres-
sive. In the London kitchen, six UK-
TOKYO
LONDON
Forget the usual central London shop-
ping haunts of Oxford Circus and
Knightsbridge and check out Boxpark, a
pop-up mall in the trendy, inner north
neighbourhood of Shoreditch.
Sixty shops are housed in 15m-long
shipping containers stacked two storeys
high on the site of a vacant railway
goods yard.
To keep up its grunge image, the
tenant mix is carefully curated to
include hip brands such as Japanese
jeans company Evisu and cult
streetwear brand Abuze, though you
can still find mainstream brands such as
Nike, Puma and Calvin Klein.
PHOTOS: BOXPARK, THE CUBE BY ELECTROLUX, MORI ART MUSEUM, POP-UP SINGAPORE HOUSE, THE POP-UP HOTEL, DESIGN HOTELS
based chefs with eight Michelin stars
among them will each present his own
menu. They include Jonray and Peter
Sanchez-Iglesias, of chef Gordon Ram-
say’s Best Restaurant television show
fame.
In Stockholm, chefs such as Klas Lind-
berg, winner of this year’s Swedish Chef
of the Year, whip up delectable dishes.
The five-course menu is kept a surprise
for diners, though they can see chefs at
work in the open-plan kitchens.
There is only one daily lunch session
(London: noon to 3pm, Stockholm:
noon to 2.30pm) and dinner session (Lon-
don: 7 to 10.30pm, Stockholm: 7 to
11pm), so book at least three weeks in
advance to secure a spot. Seats are re-
leased online every Monday
Visitors to Tokyo should keep their eyes
peeled for pop-up artwork by emerging art-
ists in places such as shopping malls.
The Mori Art Museum (MAM), consid-
ered one of Tokyo’s most influential con-
temporary art spaces, launched MAM
Pop-Up in May in which selected art
works from its collection will be displayed
in spaces around the city.
Its first instalment comprises two
works by Taguchi Yukihiro, a 32-year-old
Berlin-based artist known for his perform-
ance installations that explore the notion
of space and time.
Yukihiro’s works, which consist of
several colourful sketches of everyday
objects, and a series of video stills depict-
ing a man sitting among fallen cherry blos-
soms, are mounted on two 16m-wide
For food, check out indie names such
as Bukowski Grill for juicy, charcoal-
grilled burgers and Hop-Namo for deli-
cious Vietnamese baguettes.
And the good news is, Boxpark,
which opened last December, will be
around for five years.
Where: 2-4 Bethnal Green Road
Getting there: Take the tube to
Shoreditch High Street on the London
Overground Line. Boxpark is located
next to the station. Alternately, get off
at Liverpool Street Station or Old Street
Station and take a 10-minute walk to
Boxpark
Info: www.boxpark.co.uk
When: London: till Sept 30. Stockholm:
till Oct 21
Where: London: Royal Festival Hall,
Southbank Centre Belvedere Road.
Stockholm: Royal Opera House, StreetL
Gustav Adolfs torg 2/Operan
Getting there: London: Take the tube
to Waterloo or Embankment stations.
Stockholm: Take the metro to
Kungstradgarden station and exit at the
Gustav Adolfs torg/Operan
Price: London: £175 (S$345) for lunch;
£215 for dinner. Stockholm: 1,450
krona (S$263) for lunch; 2,600 krona for
dinner
Info: To book call +44-207-288-6450 for
London, call +46-70-938-4863 for
Stockholm or go to www.electrolux.
co.uk/cube
walls of Karajan Plaza at Ark Hills, an
events space in central Tokyo. The pop-up
display is expected to run till at least next
month.
A second pop-up instalment is already
in the pipeline, to be shown at nearby Ark
Hills Sengokuyama Mori Tower, an office,
retail and residential development due to
open next month.
When: Till next month at least
Where: Ark Hills, 1-2-32 Akasaka,
Minato-ku
Getting there: Take the Namboku
subway line to Roppongi Itchome
Station, and walk from exit 3.
Alternatively, take the Ginza line to
Tameike-Sanno Station and head to exit
13. Both exits are about a minute’s walk
to Ark Hills
Info: www.facebook.com/MAMPopUp