Archinect - News

Mocha Mousse is the 2025 Pantone Color of the Year

2024-12-05T14:50:00-05:00

The official Pantone Color of the Year for 2025 is "Mocha Mousse." The coffee-inspired tone "transports our senses into pleasure," the company claims, while celebrating a connection to the natural world. It follows a 2024 in which the less-versatile Peach Fuzz was marketed as being the dominant color strain. The annual announcement is always followed by criticism about the brand tie-ins that accompany it (though, as the New Jersey-based institute's Vice President Laurie Pressman said last year, it is generally meant to instigate a "conversation around color" in design circles worldwide).

Pressman says of the 2025 selection: "The everlasting search for harmony filters through into every aspect of our lives including our relationships, the work we do, our social connections and the natural environment that surrounds us. Harmony brings feelings of contentment, inspiring a posi9ve state of inner peace, calm, and balance as well as being tuned in with the world around us. Harmony embrace...

Coffee, concrete & bulldogs: Look inside this cavernous new café space from TOUCH

2024-07-25T15:51:00-04:00

Thailand is home to an increasing number of coffee drinkers, and there’s lots of interesting architecture to keep up with the rising demand. Today, we’ll highlight a new coffee shop in the country's third-largest city, Nakhon Ratchasima, called French Kitsch III. The concept blends material inspiration and creative spatial configuration together with form.

Photo: Metipat Prommomate

Bangkok-based TOUCH Architect designed the structure with a total floor area of 2,900 square feet using concrete as its main building material, leaving behind an instantly “strong, memorable” image upon its opening last year. The team had imagined a wedding of kitsch and their client's love for French bulldogs in the form of architecture. What it produced, in the end, enhances the brand identity while creating a retail experience that's easy and sure to lure customers back for another sip.

Photo: Metipat Prommomate

The team of four architectural designers explains their work: “By us...

Neri&Hu's newest Blue Bottle Shanghai space shelters a community of coffee drinkers from the daily grind

2024-07-18T18:25:00-04:00

A thought-provoking new café design in Shanghai’s mixed-use Columbia Circle complex from Neri&Hu for the Blue Bottle Coffee chain has caught our eye after being completed earlier this year.

Executed at just 1,680 square feet within the leftover footprint evacuated by a former residential building, the new 'The Imprint' café provides customers a respite from the blistering pace of city life with a welcoming sense of 'home' in line with the client's brand identity and community values.

Photo by Zhu Runzi

“Even if the building is no longer visible in the physical world, the traces it leaves in our individual or collective memories serve as a source of nostalgia and remembering,” the firm states in their project description.

Photo by Zhu Runzi

Within its white suspended massing, the impression of a corrugated roof's mold is used to manifest a sentimental attachment to the space in dialogue with the remaining composition of recycled clay bricks and plaster.

Photo by Zhu Runzi

"Despite the...

A Thai café offering a nature-boosted dose of inside and out

2024-07-18T11:34:00-04:00

Among the 16 global projects recognized by Prix Versailles with a World’s Most Beautiful Restaurants award this year is a unique café space in Chonburi, Thailand, from the 20-year-old Bangkok studio IDIN Architects, which garnered particular attention for its delightful and well-detailed design.

Image: DOF Sky | Ground

The stand-alone Harudot project was completed between February 2022 and June of last year. The client, a local coffee roastery, had expressed their desire to pursue a design that affirmed their brand identity’s inspirations in Japanese culture. As a result, the space exhibits a refined naturalism that, as with the other inclusions in Prix Versailles restaurant selections, is a “tribute to architecture and its commonality with people.”

Image: DOF Sky | Ground

IDIN's name itself is an acronym for Integrating Design Into Nature. They say: “The name ‘Haru’ translates to ‘Spring’ in Japanese, referring to a ‘new beginning’ and ‘growth’ while ‘Dot’ sym...

Dan Brunn Architecture completes second Coffee for Sasquatch location as an escape from the ‘concrete jungle of New York City’

2023-10-20T11:29:00-04:00

Dan Brunn Architecture has completed a coffee shop for Sasquatch in New York City’s Nolita neighborhood. As the coffee brand’s second location beyond its Los Angeles base, the cafe is designed to be a “forest of green in an urban environment of grays.”

Image credit: Brandon Shigeta

Externally, the cafe is defined by the ironwork of black window frames “reminiscent of an older New York.” As customers step inside, custom wallpaper by Flavor Paper and the artist James Jean seeks to create a calm landscape, with Jean re-interpreting the idea of the sasquatch creature’s forest through oversized vines, leaves, and flowers.

Image credit: Brandon Shigeta

The interior contains no direct lights, and instead sees every surface glow as a result of light “peering through hanging plants.” Hints of light also illuminate the edge of the white Corian wall above the barista bar. Behind the wall and counter, a fully stainless steel kitchen creates a clear distinction between...

Coffee grounds can make concrete a little stronger, too, according to a new RMIT study

2023-08-28T11:58:00-04:00

Engineers in Australia have found a way of making stronger concrete with roasted used-coffee grounds, to give the drink-additive a "double shot" at life and reduce waste going to landfills. [...] Published in the Journal of Cleaner Production, the study by RMIT engineers is the first to prove that waste coffee grounds can be used to improve concrete.

The study found that three different coffee ground samples each increased their concrete pour’s compressive strengths by up to 30% once their organic compounds were broken down through pyrolysis. The discovery could go a long way in combatting issues such as food waste and the carbon impact of concrete’s still rampant use as a construction material worldwide. RMIT will follow up with additional mechanical and durability tests on the same samples.

"Our research is in the early stages, but these exciting findings offer an innovative way to greatly reduce the amount of organic waste that goes to landfill," the paper’s co-lead author, Dr. Shannon Kilmartin-Lynch, explained. Discarded PPE may also have a stirring second life in construction, according to a separate study the same team of researchers published last year.

Neri&Hu designs Blue Bottle Zhang Yuan Cafe within revitalized 19th-century residence in Shanghai

2022-12-27T15:25:00-05:00

Shanghai-based firm Neri&Hu has completed a café within a historic, 19th-century public garden noted for its Shikumen typology residences. Named Zhang Yuan, the site has recently reopened after a complete rehabilitation of its historic buildings.

As part of the revamp, coffee roaster and retailer Blue Bottle Coffee Company commissioned Neri&Hu to create a retail space in one of the old residences. With this project, the firm aimed to channel the Shanghainese balance between urban activity and leisure.

Image: Zhu Runzi

In accordance with historic preservation guidelines, the existing brick walls, doors, and windows of the original architectural façades and atriums were preserved. The café rises in the midst of these elements. Along the exterior wall of the old building, an elongated, alley-like space connects the main street to the atriums. Here, benches and small tables are lined against the windows and walls.

Image: Zhu Runzi

Neri&Hu worked to make the new structure as light as pos...

Starbucks is seeking a caffeine-savvy designer for their China stores

2021-09-27T10:57:00-04:00

In the retail and commercial sectors, the architect’s brief is often driven by a need to offer flexible layouts to suit a variety of potential tenants. This emphasis on flexibility is for good reason, allowing a single unit to accommodate a wide portfolio of businesses without the need for expensive, environmentally damaging adaptions. However, an emphasis on standardized elements, from light and ventilation levels to waste, servicing, and delivery strategies, can also remove architects from the equally important and intriguing process of designing for a specific brand, with a unique customer experience.

Today, global retailers such as IKEA and Apple have become famous not only for their products, but for the manner in which those products are presented to potential customers. For IKEA, this means bringing customers on a choreographed journey through their showrooms, one which has even inspired viral hide-and-seek challenges. Apple, meanwhile, is famous for their collaborations with...

Archinect's Brutal Coffee introduces a Colombia Ibagué single-origin

2019-11-27T09:24:00-05:00

We’re excited to release a new varietal to our Brutal single-origin coffee lineup as we bid farewell to our Guatemala Ceiba and Brazil Yellow Diamond beans. Starting today we are now offering bags of Colombia Ibagué. This medium roast is incredibly well-balanced, with notes of chocolate, peanut, and raisin.

Ibagué is located in the Colombian Andes at 1,800 - 2,000 MASL (meters above sea level) in the center of the country. The region is famous for its perfect climate and soil for growing coffee beans. The beans are plucked and stripped of the cherries, then dry fermented for 36 hours, finally followed by a wash and dry on raised beds.

Yeekai and Paul roast at the Cognoscenti Coffee roasting facility in the fashion district in downtown, L.A. Photography by Diana Koenigsberg for Brick & Wonder's article "From the Design Entrepreneur:An Obsession with Brutalism Makes a Great Cup"

Our master roaster is Yeekai Lim, an LA-based architect-turned-coffee entrepreneur. Yeekai is the founder ...

The Architecture and Design Film Festival returns to Los Angeles with curated books and coffee provided by Archinect Outpost

2019-03-06T16:19:00-05:00

The Architecture and Design Film Festival returns to Los Angeles as it hosts a five-day event featuring 24 films devoted to architecture and design. From March 13-17 guests will be able to attend film screenings, witness engaging panel discussions, and listen to director Q&A's. With the Los Angeles Theatre Center as the festival's backdrop, the event's chosen location adds to the excitement for architecture and design enthusiasts.

In addition to the amazing films and panel discussions, an Archinect Outpost and Brutal Coffee Pop-Up will be providing a highly curated Selection of books, journals, design objects and bags of coffee, accompanied with free cups of Brutal coffee for festival goers.

Below is a list of a few highly anticipated films that will be shown during the festival.

Frank Gehry: Building Justice; Image courtesy of ADFF

Frank Gehry: Building Justice
Directed by Ultan Guilfoyle
Film Brief: Frank Gehry: Building Justice tells the story of the architect Frank Gehry’s invest...

First photos of Kengo Kuma-designed Starbucks Reserve Roastery in Tokyo

2019-02-28T14:36:00-05:00

After announcing the launch of its Reserve Roastery in Tokyo back in 2016, Starbucks has now given a look inside the Kengo Kuma-designed space. The store is Starbucks’ fifth Reserve Roastery, and the second time that the concept has opened outside of North America, following the Milan location launched last year.

The four-story coffee temple in Tokyo's Nakameguro neighborhood opened to the caffeine-deprived morning crowds at 7 a.m. today.

"The Tokyo Roastery is the only Starbucks Roastery location designed in collaboration with a local architect from the ground up," explains the project description.

Image: Starbucks

"The exterior was brought to life in collaboration with renowned Japanese architect Kengo Kuma. Envisioned by Liz Muller, Starbucks chief design officer and lead designer for all five Roasteries globally, the Roastery highlights the work of local craftsmen and women to create an enchanting destination for coffee exploration and discovery."

Image: Starbucks

"Upon entering the Roastery, customers are greeted by the world’s largest Starbucks Roastery coffee cask, four stories and more than 55 feet of blush-tinted copper adorned with hand-crafted copper cherry blossoms, which changes hues throughout the day in different lights. The expansive cask was built using the technique of tsuchi...

Brutal Coffee ~ another week, another roasting... and new bags!

2018-12-13T20:00:00-05:00

Our first week's batch of Brutal coffee sold out quickly, and people are LOVING it. We have a new batch of freshly roasted beans in this week, with our new bags.

If you're in the LA area, swing by our holiday party this Saturday afternoon to try out our Guatemala and Brazil single-origins, and stay for some smognog (for grownups only), kids drinks and shopping while all of our inventory will be on a brief sale, from 10-50% off!

Not in LA? You can still order our products (including Brutal coffee) from our new online store at outpost.archinect.com

Archinect Outpost to host Holiday Party December 15th

2018-12-07T19:22:00-05:00

Join us next Saturday, December 15th, 11-3pm for a holiday sale of our curated inventory. Newly displayed and price-reduced items (some as much as 50%) will be available for purchase at Archinect Outpost, located at 900 East 4th Street, Los Angeles CA 90013.

Come taste our Brutal coffee, try on Sam Jacob-designed scarves, peruse our books and check out our limited-time sales. This is an ideal opportunity to get last minute gifts for yourself or your design-conscious friends and family members. We'll see you there!

Can't make it to the party? Check out our recently updated online store, where we are featuring the same items as those in the retail shop.

Archinect Launches Brutal Coffee

2018-12-07T12:23:00-05:00

We’re super excited to finally launch Brutal, a passion project that has been in the works for a long time.

Architects love coffee. Archinect loves coffee. So, we have made it our responsibility to source the best beans each season, offering balanced flavor profiles, with a perfect roast. Our own standards for coffee are very high, and we expect most architects will appreciate our demand for the best quality.

We are launching our new line with 2 carefully selected single source varietals – a Guatemala Ceiba, offering notes of tobacco, plum, and cane sugar; and a Brazil Yellow Diamond, with a profile of almond and dark chocolate. Both medium roasts were crafted to be excellent in a variety of preparations, so they are equally good as espresso, pour over, drip or french press.

Pick up a bag of coffee, today, at our shop, Archinect Outpost, in downtown LA’s Arts District or on our newly updated online store.

Yeekai Lim is our roasting partner, and the founder of Cognoscenti Coffee, o...

Kengo Kuma recycles 29 shipping containers for this new Starbucks store

2018-10-04T15:59:00-04:00

The Hualien Bay Mall Starbucks consists of 29 shipping containers and has a total floorspace of 320 sq m (3,444 sq ft), spread over two floors. The containers have been reinforced, modified for glazing, and are painted white. The building's interior, which wasn't designed by Kuma, includes a brightly-colored wall mural representing Taiwan's aboriginal Amis people and offers views of a nearby mountain range.

Kuma has worked with the global coffee giant before, having designed the, now iconic, store in Fukuoka, Japan, and will also be the exterior architect of the upcoming Starbucks Reserve Roastery in Tokyo.

Photo: Starbucks

Just last month, Starbucks announced its plans to design, build, and operate thousands of eco-friendly stores globally by 2025, and the company sees recycled-shipping-container stores as part of this strategy (there are already several other Starbucks stores built from containers, 45 of them in the U.S.).

Here some photos of the interior design, which Kuma however was not in charge of.

Photo: Starbucks

Consider, for instance, the humble coffee lid

2018-06-26T00:43:00-04:00

The coffee lid’s entire purpose is to prevent the loss of coffee due to movement of the cup, but it still must have a penetration to enable drinking.’

Back in April, Sam Anderson highlighted a sentence from 'Coffee Lids: Peel, Pinch, Pucker, Puncture' (Princeton Architectural Press, 2018, Page 24), for the series New Sentences.

Any Archinectors read the book? If so share your thoughts in the comments below.