Swiss architecture firm Bureau A created a seven-storey mobile performance space and street kitchen, mounted it on a tricycle and rode it round the streets of Hanoi in Vietnam (+ movie).

Geneva studio Bureau A designed the project for Tadioto, a local bar and cultural centre, as a multipurpose structure to be used for anything from a vertical street-food restaurant to an exhibition space.

Made from a framework of blue-painted steel tubes, the mobile structure also has a small PVC roof and a battery-powered fan and lights.

The tricycle was originally owned by the steel worker who built the structure and they adapted it to fit in the bottom section.

"When we were there [in Vietnam] we crossed the whole city with it, from the outskirts in the fields where the bike was actually made to the very centre of Hanoi where we had a small party," said architect Daniel Zamarbide.

"The main purpose of this mobile device was to do a sort of humble 'performance' using local know-how and culture," he added.

There have been a few mobile structures that can be cycled to wherever they're needed in the city recently, including a group of tiny pedal-powered mobile parks in Baku and a mobile town square that features a miniature clock tower on the back of a bicycle.

Photography is by Boris Zuliani.

Here's a short description from Bureau A:

Ta đi Ôtô

Everything is dense in Hanoi, including the milk in your coffee. Everything is used. In unexpected ways “things” live different lives, they reincarnate continuously into new functions, passing from one life to another without a moment of respite. In Hanoi, this magic of creativity ends up in everyday life as opposed to art museums. The blue, a vertical Bia Hoi for Tadioto accompanies this creative movement.

Conceived as a support for small pieces of lives, as an ephemeral house or as a vertical street food restaurant, it might deviate from its original yet wide function and become something else, an unexpected urban animal. A mini-concert hall? A poetry podium ? It probably just needs to circulate, to stroll around the busy streets of Hanoi and then it’ll decide by itself which disguise to adopt.