Samovar
Port Grand, Karachi. June 2011 — September 2012.
Pakistan’s favorite beverage is tea, and it is consumed without frills. Karachi, the largest city, boasted a vibrant teahouse culture until 1980s, but failed to keep it alive through the violence of 1990s and post-9/11 terrorism. The challenge was to take a ubiquitously consumed beverage, and turn it into a rich experience centered on the city’s history and cosmopolitan culture.
Samovar Tea & Coffee House was set up as a pop-up experience on a refurbished bridge at the harbour, overlooking Karachi sea port. Themed around travel and journeys, the teahouse was designed to evoke memories of distant spaces, both geographic and temporal.
The theme was manifested across the experience. The name, Samovar, comes from a utensil that is used for tea preparation across Central Asia, Middle East & Eastern Europe. The menu, designed by a colleague, was a map with teas as destinations. The map evolved over time, as the menu changed, giving repeated visitors an artifact to look forward to. The playlist was curated to include a combination of experimental trip hop tracks complimented with classical jazz.
Complemented by the sights and sounds of the port — fog horns, sea gulls, an occasional steam engine — the experience lent both, a vague familiarity, and a definitive sense of being transported.
Samovar received significant favourable press, and was a recipient of the 2012 Shell Tameer Award, a subsidiary of the company’s flagship social investment programme, Shell LiveWIRE.
