A Shipping Container Restaurant In London – United Kingdom

Wahaca mexican restaurant has just opened a shipping container pop-up location in london’s southbank, designed by softroom architects all images © joseph burns

Mexican restaurant chain wahaca has just opened its new pop-up location in london’s southbank with a building designed by london-based architects softroom. composed of eight shipping containers and adorned with murals by international street artists, the restaurant functions as an experimental kitchen with monthly food specials over the course of 18 months, after which the project will move to another location. The most popular dishes at the southbank location will be added to wahaca’s standard menu in all its restaurants.

‘We developed the idea for using the shipping containers not only to remind visitors to the restaurant of the working history of this part of the river, but also for more practical reasons as their limited height allowed us to be able to fit two floors in to the volume of a single storey space,‘ the architects of softroom explain. Each container is painted in one of four bright colours.

The ‘wahaca southbank experiment’ seats 130 diners. one of its upper floor containers–complete with outdoor terrace– is cantilevered to offer riverside views. large sliding glass doors turn the second storey into an indoor-outdoor environment.