These days, being at the right place at the right time takes on new meaning, given the place in question might not be around tomorrow. With a spate of temporary retail and restaurant spaces popping up everywhere from New York to Berlin, designers are transforming these impermanent locations from mere shopping and eating adventures into high-octane design experiences. Such efforts signal that pop-ups might be more of a phenomenon than a fad.

Last month, Bon Appetit magazine hosted its supper club and café in Manhattan’s former Hard Rock Café. It did so with the help of the Rockwell Group. The result was a temporary dining room in dazzling blue, decorated with hanging mirrors and webs of bungee cords – a room that pushed the boundaries of what a pop-up restaurant could be.

The original pop-up, though, was anti-concept. The cutting-edge Japanese fashion label Comme des Garçons introduced the pop-up three years ago, when it opened a shop in Berlin for just a year. Since then, the label has launched temporary stores in subversively hip locales, such as a former fruit and vegetable store in Warsaw (shown).

The idea behind these so-called Guerilla stores was to generate word-of-mouth buzz. CdG even has rules stating that the interior design should reflect the space in use, which itself ought to be located away from established retail hubs. But even these pop-ups sometimes evolve into permanent entities, such as Berlin’s Lil*Shop. Robert Serek, who runs the CdG Guerilla shop in Warsaw, says his location will most likely morph into his own eponymously named retail outlet: Ser-Shop or Serek-of-Warsaw.

Putting a new spin on the pop-up trend is Intervention – A Temporary Brand Pharmacy, (invitation shown at right) which is taking place inside the avant-garde L.A. men’s shop All-Purpose from December 3 to 9. Designed by Jimmyjane, Citizen:Citizen, and Filius, the installation will “confront retail addiction and holiday overdose” by transforming All-Purpose into a temporary store, one that might soon disappear but leave a lasting impression. According to the official press release, it will also renegotiate "the boundaries between art and design, gallery and storefront, giver and recipient.”

The objects of desire on offer include Citizen:Citizen’s Indulgence collection – which consists of gold-dipped spoons ostensibly for snorting coke, and Bullet-proof Rose, a brooch made of the bullet proof-material Kevlar; Jimmyjane’s 24k gold vibrators and Filius’ limited-edition shirts, knits and accessories. “As for the design, we cannot release any details as All Purpose itself is still not in the know of exactly what we will be ‘doing unto’ their store front and interior,” JimmyJane’s Michelle Cotton explains via email. “Interventions can be shocking to those receiving them; we’re going to surprise them.”

The pop-up theme isn’t just confined to fleeting moments of retail or culinary exclusivity – reserved for those in-the-know. Designer Garth Roberts launched his “Adhoc” Pop-Up design office as a “dynamic way to generate design, at the right moment, and with the right people.” The idea here is to create unique products in new, ever-changing cultural contexts. Each workshop runs for three months. In the first, design students helped to reimagine the brand identity of bed manufacturer Flou. Adopting the term guerilla for this project (which is subtitled the Guerilla Office Project), Roberts’ pop-up office endeavour is scheduled to travel to Hong Kong, Berlin and Vancouver.

Watch for Garth Roberts’ Identikit in the January/February 2008 issue of Azure.