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Austrian architecture studio Precht has used more than 7,000 handmade bricks to create the floors, walls and stepped seating in this Bangkok cafe for coffee brand % Arabica. More
Designers Eduard Eremchuk and Katy Pititskaya have created a cafe in Voronezh, Russia, that embodies “the essence of a doughnut” through delicious-looking velvety walls and squidgy seeming furniture. More
A translucent structure made from salvaged waste materials sits at the heart of this coffee shop and roastery in Prague, designed by Czech architecture studio Kogaa. More
Design office Roar Studio combined industrial materials such as concrete and stainless steel with decorative terrazzo and broken ceramic tiles for Drop Coffee, a cafe in Dubai’s Dar Al Wasl Mall.The Dubai-based studio was asked to design an interior that would suit the flow of visitors to the cafe, who enter the space from two different entrances – one connected to the outdoors and one to the mall.
The bar area is framed by a wooden structure
It chose to keep the design simple by focusing on the materials used and framed the bar area of the cafe in pale wood and LED lights to create an eye-catching centrepiece.
“This is the second outlet for this homegrown Emirati brand,” Roar Studio founder Pallavi Dean told Dezeen.
“Their main drive was to achieve a minimal space where the coffee bar is a central feature and creates a theatrical moment – the making of the coffee is at the front and centre stage.”
A broken-tile mosaic decorates the main wall
The ceiling of the cafe is concrete and the studio also painted the walls with a concrete paint finish, which is complemented by a terrazzo-effect tiled stone floor in grey and white hues.
Its colours and shapes are picked up on the main wall, which was decorated with a mosaic of broken ceramic tiles that form an abstract pattern similar to the floor.
“We sourced basic white tiles from Rakceramics – a local manufacturer – which were then broken on-site to compose a patterned wall,” Dean explained.
“We aren’t trying to reinvent the wheel by using broken tiles – our idea was to form a counterpoint to the terrazzo effect porcelain flooring as though the chips of the broken tiles were used in the flooring.”
Stainless steel was used for the countertops
A large counter in pale wood is connected to the ceiling by beams in the same material, framing the bar area of the store. The counter is covered in stainless steel, which was chosen for both practical and aesthetic reasons.
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“The coffee bar has a stainless steel countertop which is extremely sturdy and hygienic but also allows the light to bounce through the space because of its reflectivity,” Dean said.
Orange clamp-style tables for a quick coffee break
Around the base of the bar, lighted skirting made out of glass blocks give the impression that it is floating above the ground. By the side of the bar, the enclosed kitchen area features a wall made from matching glass blocks, enabling visitors to see the silhouettes of Drop Coffee’s staff while they work.
The studio also chose to work with certain materials to help create a less noisy atmosphere for the visitors.
“The ceiling is acoustic foam sprayed, an effect that adds to the industrial aesthetic and helps muffle the noise in the open-plan space – not to mention the noise generated by the coffee machines,” Dean explained.
Grey hues and pale wood decorate the space
Drop Coffee already has one cafe in Dubai and the plan is for each of the branches to be associated with a different colour, with burnt orange used for Roar Studios’ design.
The colour has been dotted throughout the space and was used for seating as well as on clamp-style tables set along one wall for customers who want to have a quick coffee standing up.
Australia’s dramatic landscape and sunsets inform design of Hong Kong cafe
Roar Studio was founded in 2013 as Pallavi Dean Interiors by Dean, who was a Dezeen Awards 2020 judge, and rebranded as Roar Studio in 2018. It has previously designed a high-tech learning space for children in Dubai and issued a white paper about the ways in which Covid-19 will impact the design of schools and colleges.
Photography is by Oculis Project.
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Canadian design duo Julia Jamrozik and Coryn Kempster have created a playful all-blue cafe in a century-old house in Buffalo, New York, with an optical illusion staircase.Named Tipico Coffee, the cafe’s identity was formed with the intention of designing a space that encourages social interactions and supports local craftsmanship.
The cafe’s main bar is grafted from reclaimed furniture
Reclaimed furniture and lighting made from construction-site string lights feature alongside an oversized staircase to nowhere which forms amphitheatre-style seating.
The cafe’s main bar is made from ten reclaimed wooden tables sourced from classified advertisements website Craigslist.
The main bar encourages social interactions
The tables are grafted together and painted in sky-blue, forming a unified bar which runs along one wall of the cafe.
“The process of designing the cafe really started with the idea of the social infrastructure of the grafted bar,” Jamrozik and Kempster told Dezeen.
Drinks on ice are displayed between the bar’s table-tops
The open bar has clusters of swivelling stools arranged around blue table-tops that jut out of the bar’s customer side, allowing easy socialising between customers and staff.
“The different shapes of the tables come together to create opportunities for conversations,” continued the designers.
“This is augmented with the use of swivelling bar stools that allow patrons the ability to turn their bodies to orient themselves to a new connection.”
Swivelling stools encourage random encounters between customers and staff
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Groups of circular olive-green garden tables and chairs, as well as built-in blue benches, make up two intimate seating areas behind each side of the bar, which are separated by a wall.
The tables and chairs used are purposefully outdoor furniture. This means that the seating can be moved onto an exterior patio in the summer months.
Tipico’s atmosphere is a mix of indoors and outdoors
Various scattered potted plants blend green and blue furniture together and continue the theme of bringing the outdoors inside.
Jamrozik and Kempster explained their intentions for using sky-blue as the cafe’s dominant colour.
Ménard Dworkind creates retro coffee bar in downtown Montreal
“We wanted to use a vibrant colour to visually tie together the bar and benches to create continuity in the space and give visual emphasis to the bar as the main design gesture.”
“We chose blue to both complement the olive green furniture and plants, but also to create moments of contrast with the bespoke yellow lights,” they continued.
Potted plants are scattered around the space
The bespoke lights designed for the cafe are composed of construction-site string lights, wound around sections of aluminium stock tubes. They hang above the bar and the seating areas.
“We wanted to transform the string lights, while still making it clear what the source product was,” explained the designers.
Lighting made from construction-site string lights
Metal pegboard is another off-the-shelf material used in the space, making up a menu board behind the bar, a merchandise display board and a community message board.
The bottom of the main bar and built-in-benches was also lined with wooden pegboard in order to “give them both a visual texture, taking advantage of the acoustic properties of the perforations,” said Jamrozik and Kempster
A merchandise display board made from metal pegboard
A sense of the building’s historic charm remains in the existing fireplace that is preserved, which is painted in a strip of the same sky-blue paint as the main bar.
An over-scaled stairwell acts as an additional, cosy seating area fit for a couple of customers at a time.
The building’s original fireplace and its playful stairwell
Sealed off by a mirror and leading to nowhere, the stairwell is intended as an “Alice in Wonderland moment,” enhancing the cafe’s playfulness.
“The stairway’s oversized steps effectively shrink the visitor and act as seats while the mirrored ceiling gives the impression that the space continues up,” explained Jamrozik and Kempster.
“We imagine people will be drawn to the curious space and hope that they enjoy the tongue-in-cheek reference that plays on the domestic history of the original building,” continued the designers.
Sealed off by a mirror, the stairwell is an optical illusion
Jamrozik and Kempster note the importance of playful design in their work, which they believe connects people in public spaces.
“We use the language of play to create social infrastructures: physical prompts which encourage contact between strangers.”
“We believe that questioning the way people use and occupy space and their relationship to one another through playful encounters has enormous potential to speak across generations and cultural differences,” they continued.
The importance of play is an influence in Jamrozik and Kempster’s design work
Designers everywhere are acknowledging the importance of designing public spaces to maximise social interactions. In Montreal, Ménard Dworkind has created a cafe with a central standing bar, while Central Saint Martins graduates have created blocky outdoor furniture for a public square in Croydon, London.
Julia Jamrozik and Coryn Kempster have collaborated on design projects since 2003. Their varied work spans temporary installations and permanent interior and architectural commissions.
Photography is by Sara Schmidle.
Project credits:
Architecture team: Abstract Architecture PC
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The layout of this craft bakery in Berlin, designed by Danish architects Mathias Mentze and Alexander Vedel Ottenstein, revolves around an open kitchen that showcases the beauty of the bread-making process.Located in the courtyard of a restored brick factory in the city’s Scheunenviertel quarter, Sofi is a craft bakery that makes bread and cakes using grains sourced from small, organic farmers in Northern Europe.
Above: Sofi is housed in a former brick factory. Top image: A long, communal table offers space to eat
The project is a collaboration between Danish chef and restaurateur Frederik Bille Brahe and Design Hotels founder Claus Sendlinger.
As well as making baked goods using organic ingredients and low-intervention techniques, the owners’ ambition is for Sofi to serve as a community hub and to supply fresh bread to a selection of local restaurants.
A 3.5-metre-tall bread shelf separates the bakery from the guest area
Its interior was designed by Mentze and Vedel Ottenstein in collaboration with Augsburg-based interior design studio Dreimeta.
“We were introduced to the project last summer when Frederik Bille Brahe approached us about a new bakery he was working on in Berlin,” Vedel Ottenstein told Dezeen.
“Like Frederik, we are based in Copenhagen and have frequented his existing cafes and restaurants. So he brought us on to ensure that there would be a distinct Copenhagen feel to his first endeavour outside of Denmark.”
A corner bench is made from solid elm
“When we first visited the site in July 2020, the former tenant — which was a famous bagel shop — had just vacated the space. From the beginning, it was quite easy to imagine that this could be an amazing project, as the space itself has a lot of nice qualities,” he recalled.
“The double-height ceiling as well as the connection to the inner courtyard bring both light and a certain curiosity to the location. The space needed a lot of work but we felt the assignment was more to bring forth existing qualities instead of inventing new ones.”
All furniture was custom-made for the interior
The new floor plan revolves around an open-plan kitchen that sits at the centre of the space. Conceived as a “production floor”, this allows guests to watch Sofi’s small, international team of young bakers rolling out dough and working the ovens.
“Making bread is a highly technical skillset with all these different steps and we wanted this process to be the generator of the plan layout,” said Vedel Ottenstein.
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“A bakery has a very clear narrative in which the oven is the heart of the place and so we wanted to place the oven in the exact middle of the space,” he continued.
“It’s like a choreography and we wanted to showcase the beauty of the process to all of the customers – from mixing the flour and water all the way to stocking up the bread shelf with freshly baked goods.”
The shelves display a range of the team’s favourite products
A red vinyl floor and walls painted in a delicate yellow hue are intended to reflect the colours of the bricks in the courtyard outside.
Peg coat racks and shelves wrap the walls while a 3.5-metre-tall bread shelf and long communal table fill up the centre of the space.
The stools were made by Rammelisten
All are made from solid elm with walnut detailing, with larger pieces such as the counter, bread rack, work table and shelves fabricated by a German carpentry firm. Smaller, movable items including the stools and benches were crafted by Rammelisten, a small woodwork studio based just north of Copenhagen.
“This was so that we could be more hands-on, follow the production and do alterations to the designs if we discovered issues,” explained Vedel Ottenstein.
Atelier Vime’s wicker lamp was decorated with a flower display by Danh Vo
The huge wicker pendant lamp that hangs over the communal table was handmade by French studio Atelier Vime and has been decorated with a flower display by local artist Danh Vo.
“The flower arrangement installed inside the shade is made from bast and hops flowers as a nod to the leftover waste from beer production that Frederik intends to use in the bread-making at Sofi,” explained Vedel Ottenstein.
Pinocchio is a tiny bakery in Japan decorated in the colours of bread
“The installation is a seasonal piece, where Danh Vo will bring in new flowers and plants according to the season from his farm north of Berlin, called Güldenhof,” he continued.
“He wishes to challenge the typical idea of a flower arrangement by using unexpected plants and weeds such as flowering leeks and lettuces.”
The bakery’s colourful glazed tableware comes from Studio X
A tall, open shelving unit separating the bakery and guest area displays a range of the team’s favourite products — including ceramics, coffee, tea, natural wines and flour from the Danish Kørnby mill.
Colourful glazed tableware by London’s Studio X, hand-crafted cups by Danish artist Kasper Hesselbjerg and vintage cutlery were all carefully selected by the design team and owners.
Sofi is not the first warm-hued bakery to feature on Dezeen. Design studio I IN decorated this tiny bakery in Japan in the colours of bread, while US studio The New Design Project outfitted a West Village cookie shop with speckled terrazzo, beige tiles and creamy walls to reference the baked goods for sale.
Photography is by Volker Conradus.
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The terracotta colour scheme and semi-circular forms used throughout this Hong Kong cafe by architecture firms Studio Etain Ho and Absence from Island pay homage to Uluru and Australia’s spectacular sunsets.Located on a street corner in Hong Kong’s Sai Ying Pun district, the 30-square-metre cafe sits at the bottom of an old apartment building.
Above: Today is Long features semi-circular windows and murals. Top image: It is located at the bottom of an old apartment block. Photo is courtesy of Dypiem
It has a generous facade and a tight, triangular plan into which the architects have managed to squeeze a compact kitchen and bar area with a serving counter, as well as an area of bench seating and two toilets.
Called Today is Long, the cafe is owned by a barista and a public-relations manager, who bonded over their shared love of coffee and the fact they’d both spent time studying and working in Australia.
The lower part of the cafe’s facade is wrapped in terracotta-coloured tiles. Photo is courtesy of Liz Eatery
“The cafe is a place to house their fond memories of Australia and the good coffee that makes their life,” explained Etain Ho, who also runs Absence from Island alongside its founder Chi Chun Tang.
“They would very much like to share the coffee with local residents and to make the cafe into a social hub.”
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The owners’ love for Australia has been translated into the design in the form a warm orange palette informed by the colours of dusk and the country’s famous natural landmark Uluru, also known as Ayers Rock, which is a sandstone monolith in the Northern Territory.
As well as the colour scheme, the hemispherical shape of a setting sun has been incorporated into the cafe’s walls and windows, forming a distinctive geometrical facade that distinguishes the cafe from its grey concrete surroundings.
A tunnel above the entrance houses potted plants
One of the semi-circular windows is recessed above the cafe’s entrance, creating a sheltered, terracotta-coloured tunnel for housing potted plants.
A similar shape is carved into the wall below the take-away counter window and rotated sideways to create the rounded rectangle that acts as Today is Long’s largest window.
Bench seating runs along the window
A strip of fired ceramic tiles that recall the texture of Uluru’s sunbaked sandstone wraps the lower portion of the cafe’s exterior, extending the warm orange colour scheme to the street.
Inside, the generous windows, white walls and terrazzo floor create a light and open space. A corner of casual, stepped bench seating topped with terracotta tiles is dotted with potted plants and framed by a semi-circular mural.
Greenery is integrated liberally into the design. Photo is courtesy of Liz Eatery
“Australia has always been blessed with abundant amounts of sunlight, so a lot of white has been used together with the large windows to enhance the bright and airy atmosphere,” explained Etain Ho.
“Spaces have been reserved under the entrance arch, seating area and the overhead storage for plants in order to create a green, lush and natural environment. Coffee grains used in the cafe will also be recycled as fertiliser for the plants.”
The sign bearing the cafe’s acronym hangs above the door
Studio Etain Ho and Absence from Island are not the first design studio to use sunset colours to brighten up a grey urban context.
In Tokyo, local designer Yota Kakuda enlivened a cheese tart shop with a transparent acrylic counter coloured in a gradient of bright pink, orange, yellow and lime.
All photography is by Fo Visuals unless otherwise stated.
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Melbourne-based interior design studio Biasol used earthy hues and stylised architectural motifs to create a destination inspired by Wes Anderson’s symmetry and nostalgic colour palette.The Budapest Cafe in Carlton, Melbourne is Biasol’s second edition of its Wes Anderson-informed concept, following a first location in Chengdu, China, that featured marble surfaces and pale pastel greens.
The 94 square-metre cafe has similar pastel shades, but in earthy colours that have been adapted to its Carlton setting and audience.
Top image: counter sits within focal archway. Above image: the studio cover walls with earthy shades
“Our design draws on Anderson’s meticulous, memorable and magical worlds to create an inviting destination with whimsical character and mythical scenes,” Biasol founder Jean-Pierre Biasol told Dezeen.
“We were also inspired by his symmetry and quirky set designs; vivid and nostalgic colour palettes; and the sentiment that infuses his films,” Biasol continued.
Caned chairs and banquette seating fill the space
The studio played with depth by applying dark tones like terracotta and orange to the walls, while softer beige and sand hues blanket the fanciful elements in the foreground – including focal archways reminiscent of Wes Anderson’s 2014 feature film, The Grand Budapest Hotel.
“We evolved the design and experience to an earthy colour palette reflecting our local sensibilities,” Biasol explained.
Rust-red upholstered banquettes wrap around the space, adding texture and warmth to the double-height space, and envelop a bar table that functions as the centre of the seating area.
Architectural motifs decorate the walls
A large sand-textured archway frames a glossy, tubular point-of-sale counter in terracotta, both of which draw customers through the space. Subtle silver hardware, meanwhile, provides a bright, metallic contrast to the softer tones.
The studio’s fondness for modern abstract art, design, and hospitality informed its decision to create “an immersive gallery-like experience,” Biasol said.
This led to an exploration of form and colour, with the aim of designing a place where art meets architecture.
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By reducing the interior’s built form, the studio created a dramatic visual aesthetic. Stylised steps to nowhere embellish the venue’s walls, rising behind the tubular counter framed within arched alcoves and encouraging patrons to engage with and capture the “imaginative and evocative” design.
Appliances contrast the earthy setting
“With a richer palette and bolder design, the new cafe is timeless and contemporary for its Melbourne patrons, while still offering a relaxed and indulgent atmosphere and hospitality experience,” Biasol said.
The Budapest Cafe is one of many projects the studio have completed globally. In 2019 Biasol completed contemporary dining spaces for Grind in southeast London, as well the interiors for this east London townhouse.
Photography is by Derek Swalwell.
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