THE SALVAGE EMPORIUM : ARCHITECTURE FOR THE BRANDING OF SALVAGE MATERIALS

Abstract

The Salvage Emporium was intended as the architecture for branding and promoting the reuse of salvaged materials. Sited at Dempsey, it aims to align itself with the similar home styling businesses and lifestyle destinations within the close proximity, as well as to attract the affluent class of target audience patronizing Dempsey Hill in hope that through them, the trend can be perpetuated and popularised. At the Salvage Emporium, one can expect to not just find ready-made home furnishings designed from salvage materials, but also head over to the large inventory to select their own salvage materials and rent a workshop space to realize their own creation.The design intention of the Salvage Emporium was to have the utilitarian made look good - to create a pleasant ambience that the visitors can enjoy and appreciate with the utilitarian building elements and the scrap collected. The Emporium expresses storage as a storefront, and to allow the otherwise hidden away working processes to viewed and appreciated as a performance to visiting customers. To be in line with the purpose of the architecture being a vehicle to brand and promote salvaged materials, standard components and proprietary systems to be applied in the architecture were evaluated for their ability to be disassembled and reused at the end of the Salvage Emporium’s lifespan. The Salvage Emporium is about maximising resources. In the day it promotes and sells the idea of stretching the potential of our building waste, in the evening it wastes no opportunity by transforming its otherwise unused sorting pit into a wine place. This maximises space usage and commercial value.