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Abstract

This visual essay examines the pop-up desert café as a contemporary interior condition shaped by mobility, reversibility, and performative occupation. Framed through Bauman’s (2000) liquid modernity and Branzi’s (2002) diffuse modernity, it argues that temporary desert setups are not informal exceptions but design responses to unstable, event-based ways of living. The essay reads the pop-up as a hybrid interior-exterior assemblage, where carpets, furniture, lighting, signage, and social rituals produce atmosphere and collective presence. Using collages on photography taken by the author-co-created with architect Moustafa Abdulwahed—as a method, the visual essay journey moves from photographic observation to extraction and speculative recomposition, identifying ‘genetic elements’ of temporary interiorit, while reimaging the photographed spaces through the lens of performative pop-us. Visual representation is treated as a creative response and analytical tool, allowing the collages to perform the logics of assembly, layering, and transformation they describe. This reframes pop-up interiors as intelligence rather than improvisation.

First Page

6

Last Page

21

References

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Author Biography

Ayman Kassem
Ayman Kassem is an interior architect. He studied at the Lebanese University and did his doctoral studies at Politecnico di Milano. He is currently an assistant professor at the Department of Interior Design, Ajman University, UAE. His fields of interest and research include: coworking spaces, exhibition design, museums, flexible interiors, performative spaces, and performance theories. He took part in the EU COST Action research project: The Geography of New Working Spaces.

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