Mi Pan Bakery, Mexico City, Mexico

We enjoy bakeries. And we specially really like bakeries with a real feeling of structure and model. We have written about bakeries for virtually two decades and we proceed to glimpse for clean strategies.

In the Mi Pan Bakery job, we like the candid admission of the designers that they recognized they could not generate a style and design that was way too modern day, also funky or also diverse as it may transform folks away and intimidate tradition-loving buyers who are not utilised to “designer” bakeries. Yet the designers also preferred to evoke a distinct feeling of newness and freshness to update the impression of the 40-yr-outdated manufacturer.

For four many years, Mi Pan has been a bakery for everyone, for young and old. It was vital for the manufacturer to keep on being an “everyone’s” bakery, to not surface snobbish or pretentious. And as bread is an integral aspect of lots of Mexican traditions and celebrations, it was essential to continue the open up-to-all and element-of-everyone’s-daily life brand values.

The perform was done by Concentrico, an interdisciplinary collaboration studio of architects and designers, centered in San Pedro Garza Garcia, Monterrey, Mexcio. The studio is led by inventive director Alejandro Peña Villarreal who was also the head architect of the Mi Pan undertaking. Other vital challenge leads were being architects Ana Rebeca Mata and Jose Maria Cuevas and industrial designer May possibly Cisneros.

To understand the project’s relationship with the close to and distant previous of Mexico, the designers at Concentrico not only analyzed the record of the brand but also the visual and simple traditions and customs of Mexican bakeries in general.

As a consequence, the bakery’s guarantee “Siempre bueno masa a migaja” – often very good from dough to crumb – continues to be unchanged and it is also really obvious on the again wall of the retail outlet. The aprons of the staff members have the concept “Prueba el Pan de Verdad” – Attempt the true bread.

The over-all ambiance of the bakery is open up and clean up, heat and inviting, but it is not cozy or homey. There is a perception of manufacturing and substantial scale with steel trays, rows of shelving and massive displays.

There are several visible or physical barriers in between the shoppers and the bakers, and the lively creation speed of a fast paced bakery is overtly seen to all. At the exit, clients will come across a display screen of the regular celebratory breads, Rosca de Reyes and Pan de Muertos.

“Rosca de Reyes” (kings’ wreath) is a Mexican classic celebratory bread wreath enjoyed with household and pals on “Dia de Reyes” on January 6^th (Epiphany Working day or Kings Working day). A modest plastic figurine is placed inside of the wreath symbolising newborn Jesus. The particular person who finds the figurine is predicted to throw a fiesta and serve tamales for everyone on” Dia de la Candelaria” on February 2.

“Pan de Muertos” (bread of the dead) is an necessary component of a “Dia de Los Muertos” (celebrated in Oct or November) dwelling shrine or ofrenda. The bread’s objective is to nourish the useless who check out the land of the residing on that working day. Tuija Seipell

Photographs Jose Miguel Gonzales/Apertura Studio, Juan Pablo Tavela/Jpark Studio