BUNTAI BODEGA
A BESPOKE BODEGA-STYLE MICRO-VENUE CREATED FOR BUNTAI AT GEMFEST.
BUNTAI BODEGA
PROJECT
GEMFEST / PULLUP RECORDINGS
CLIENT
LOCATION
DESIGN DEVELOPMENT / SHOPFRONT BUILD / SCENIC FABRICATION / INSTALLATION
CHARLTON PARK ESTATE, WILTSHIRE
SCOPE
01 / The Narrative
Buntai came to us with the idea of turning a neighbourhood bodega into a festival micro-venue.
The starting point was familiar: the kind of everyday convenience-store frontage you might pass without thinking twice.
The challenge was pushing that language far enough that it felt theatrical and unmistakably festival without losing the recognisable details that made the concept work.
Bold colour, signage and layered dressing gave the venue its personality while still keeping it grounded in the wider Steel Street world.
02 / The Build
Texture did a lot of the work.
Bonding was used to build up a stone-brick finish across the frontage before the walls were dirtied down by hand, adding age and depth without losing the brighter Buntai identity.
A 2.5-metre shop display sat behind the front window, giving the façade another layer and creating the impression of a functioning store beyond the street.
The combination of textured walls, signage, window dressing and smaller graphic details helped turn a relatively simple shopfront structure into something that felt much more complete.
03 / The Details
The bodega wasn't intended to feel like dressing around a stage.
It became the entrance into Buntai’s world: recognisable enough to feel familiar, but strange and exaggerated enough to belong in a festival field.
That balance was important. Too realistic and it would disappear into the street; too theatrical and the bodega reference would stop working.
The final space sat somewhere between the two — a familiar neighbourhood shopfront reworked into a venue with its own identity.
