What does a 150 year-old Dutch brewing company know about contemporary Mexican nightlife? Yeah...probably very little. Yet, that's exactly where Heineken has pushed its team of designers, challenging them to rethink clubbing conventions and design Mexico City's newest lounge destination.

Heineken gave us an inside look at Mexico's Pop-Up City Lounge, their nightlife concept presented in conjunction with the metropolis' Mercedes Benz Fashion Week. Set entirely inside two forty-foot shipping crates adjacent to the runway tent, the space includes a full bar, self-serve draughts, and an open area of keg tables and conversation cocoons (more on those later). With ample room for both intimate conversation and bar-front mingling, the space provides a chance to see and be seen—whichever best fits your style and, if you're like us, a preferred proximity to beer.

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Heineken isn't the first brand to design a Fashion Week lounge and certainly not the first to utilize a shipping container (we see you, Taco Bell), but it is one of the few in Mexico to give local designers a voice. Six Mexican designers contributed to the conceptualization of the pop-up—including interior designer Victor Hugo Jimenez, whose floating cocoons gracefully nest socialites, insulating their conversation inside geometric spheres.

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Jimenez's patterns repeat in Jorge Delfin's uniform designs for the wait staff, which feature green and white tessellating triangles on lucite dresses and wood-cut heels. Servers carry angular LED-lit trays offering chilé smoked beers and chilangos, sweet/spicy beer "hoptails" inspired by citizens of the Distrito Federal.

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The camaraderie and collaboration between these six designers can be found in the work scattered throughout the space. Take, for example, the interplay between Jimenez's furniture and Delfin's fashion: loungers unwilling to leave their conversation cocoons can pull at hanging Heineken bottles, which send a signal to the bar for another round. Iridescent lights embedded in the bar staff's uniforms glow green once drinks are on their way.

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The Pop-Up City Lounge is a part of Open Design Explorations, Heineken's larger series to redesign the future of nightlife. Now in its third year, this annual program calls upon designers from New York, London, Warsaw, Singapore, Mexico City and beyond to collaborate and produce new features for lounges, bars, clubs and drinking experiences. Their realized designs travel the world as temporary Heineken installations; previous pop-ups have appeared at the London Design Festival and Salone Milan.

Heineken's Mexico City pop-up comes as the beer company looks to solidify its presence in the region, including a $480 million brewery investment. However, as Heineken's Global Head of Design Mark van Iterson points out, the international strategy is ideological as well as opportunistic. "Most beer companies look backward," Iterson says, referencing beer campaigns that use nostalgia, patriotism and clydesdales (get our jist?) to relate to consumers, "Though Heineken has a history, it's a history of innovation. Rather than focus on the past, we use our heritage to support new future initiatives."

Mexico City, too, is all about innovation. Its redefined identity comes partly from necessity—the city is in the 98% percentile for annual municipal growth and is undergoing several long-overdue improvements in its education and infrastructure, both expected to impact city's future design landscape. With so many moving parts, Mexico City has no option but to look forward.

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As a plus, van Iverson notes, the region's innovation extends to brewing culture. With its tradition in tequila and mezcal, "Mexico has an untapped opportunity in premium beer" he says, "It's prime occasion for a brand to speak with consumers about what they imagine to be the future of drinking."

The Pop-Up City Lounge enjoyed a one-week residency in Mexico City from April 13-17, during Mercedes Benz Fashion Week. The lounge and its design team will travel to Taiwan in September.