With harsh lighting, a pragmatic layout and no real discernible identity beyond corporate branding, supermarkets are not the most inspiring of spaces. But gourmet food retailer Voramar Store in Port de Pollença, Majorca, moves that needle of archetypal expectation. “We approached the supermarket as an art gallery,” says Juan David Martínez, founder of local multidisciplinary firm Minimal Studio, which was behind the perspective-shifting design.

The brutalist-inspired interior of the food retailer by Minimal Studio now doubles as a rentable space for private events.

Fronted on the street by an ornamentation-free concrete facade, the store is accessed by darkened portals that intentionally belie the beauty of the illuminated interior. Drawing on “masterpieces of minimalist brutalism,” Martínez and his team applied a restrained palette of concrete (raw for the monolithic table and counter bases, polished for the floors, table and counter surfaces, and mortar-finish on the walls) and steel that lends the interior a sharply spare aesthetic. This sobriety is contrasted by brightly lit freestanding refrigerator boxes and a radical ceiling installation composed of nearly 1,200 recycled plastic produce crates.

Different geometric patterns created by the recycled plastic crates’ ventilation slots cast ever-changing shadows throughout the day, an effect that activates the unique interior.

Sourced from various rubbish points across the region, the multicoloured plastic crates were first repaired and then painted in the same pastel green, a colour chosen to complement and soften the concrete envelope while also unifying the different geometric patterns of the boxes’ ventilation slots. Attached to the ceiling by a fixed system of slender metal rods, the crates are staggered to accommodate their varying depths and sizes; they cascade down from the ceiling to cover upper portions of the walls and wrap the tops of the refrigerators — a move that created an even stronger connection between the concrete and plastic. Geometric patterns are cast in shadow through the ventilation slots, an effect that evolves with the change in natural light throughout the day.

Another unexpected layer to the transformation is a new opportunity it has given the owners: They were so taken by the design, they want to share it with as many people as possible and now rent the space out for private dinners and special events.