You’ll know you’ve found one when a pool, gallery, hotel, or beer garden appears right in front of you. Tulum, Mexico POPUP Ashram at Papaya Playa Project Pop-up yoga at a pop-up hotel. Designed by Tokyo’s Atelier Bow-Wow, the structure can be dismantled for transport; it has since moved to Berlin, and will continue on to Mumbai next year. Proxy joins a rising tide of pop-up urbanism worldwide that has to do with places that occupy areas in ways that are unexpected and generally linked to the vicissitudes of real estate. fashion label opens at Unknown Union boutique.

These structures, whatever forms they take, offer a sense of the improbable: things crop up where they don’t quite belong. They add a feeling of discovery to even the most familiar places. Handsome gray-blue shipping containers hold a coffee bar and an artisanal-ice-cream parlor (choose your flavor and liquid nitrogen freezes the custard, lickety-split) while a big red wagon offers grass-fed meats as well as fish on Fridays to a particularly San Franciscan mix of hipsters, families, and just about anybody. In 2009, Platoon produced a project in Seoul; composed of 28 shipping containers, the Platoon Kunsthalle Seoul supported, according to cofounder Christoph Frank, “the kinds of things we did in Berlin but in ways that are more professional and not as weather-dependent.za; through October 1. papayaplayaproject. lanvin. Their Puma City project was designed to move through standard shipping networks; the 24-container mobile retail structure has so far traveled to Tianjin, China; Alicante, Spain; Johannesburg, South Africa; and Boston.

Colored LED lights gave the floating pavilion a shimmering nocturnal presence, while interior lamps evoked the sparkle of the nearby Eiffel Tower. This was pop-up as eco-chic.September 06, 2012 Festive string lights above picnic tables; bratwurst, pretzels, and kraut; hefty steins of rare beers; and an unmistakable feeling of gemütlichkeit: welcome to San Francisco’s Biergarten, among the many attractions at Proxy, a vibrant pop-up enclave in Hayes Valley.

The Mobile Art Chanel Contemporary Art Container, designed by Zaha Hadid as a showcase for artists inspired by the Chanel bag, was unveiled at the Venice Art Biennale; the lavish structure touched down in Hong Kong and New York, then Paris. The China wholesale Tankless Electric Water Heater Faucet latest wave of pop-up retail—whose recent manifestations include Hermès’s shoe boutique on the Rue de Sèvres, in Paris, and HWKN’s cubes for Uniqlo—offers structures, spaces, and activities that last…for a while. A very different project, the BMW Guggenheim Lab, began its global tour in New York’s East Village last year. The carbon-fiber structure sheltered an open-air “living room” for workshops and events, and even public toilets, creating a sense of community and utility. unknownunion. Step into a great one and you’re walking into an improvised space that’s dialed in to the local vibe. Perfect. Designer Joost Bakker aimed to emphasize sustainable practices, with produce grown on the roof and cooking oil reused as biodiesel.K. Animated by a different set of priorities, the Greenhouse by Joost went to a waterfront site near Sydney’s Opera House for a six-week run.com; through October 31. electrolux. Conceived by curators David van der Leer and Maria Nicanor, this think tank and community center slid into a sliver of land between two tenements.com; through October 21