Archinect - News

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...

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...

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

Starbucks commits to move towards more sustainable stores by 2025

2018-09-19T14:09:00-04:00

Starbucks has announced that the company plans to create 10,000 eco-friendly stores globally by 2025. The news follows other sustainability focused initiatives taken on by the coffee giant such as eliminating single-use plastic straws by 2020 and its partnership with McDonald's to create a compostable coffee cup.

“Simply put, sustainable coffee, served sustainably is our aspiration,” said the company's CEO Kevin Johnson. "We know that designing and building green stores is not only responsible, it is cost effective as well. The energy and passion of our green apron partners has inspired us to find ways to operate a greener store that will generate even greater cost savings while reducing impact.”

To do so, Starbucks has developed a six-part framework, coined The Greener Stores Framework, based on the LEED certification program and other sustainable operations. The framework offers a comprehensive model, laying out six key standards ranging from waste management tactics to design upg...

Turns out the U.S. has more museums than the combined number of Starbucks and McDonalds

2015-03-26T13:27:00-04:00

There are roughly 11,000 Starbucks locations in the United States, and about 14,000 McDonald's restaurants. But combined, the two chains don't come close to the number of museums in the U.S., which stands at a whopping 35,000. So says the latest data release from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, an independent government agency that tallies the number and type of museums in this country. [...] the 35,000 active museums represent a doubling from the number estimated in the 1990s.

John Hill opines on the highly debatable recent article "What Starbucks Gets that Architects Don’t"

2013-10-24T17:21:00-04:00

Is it necessary to poll hundreds of coffee drinkers to determine that round tables "protect self-esteem for those...flying solo"? Or could an architect have come to the same determination by believing their impression that round tables work better in some environments than square tables, be it by observing patrons at a local cafe or in a public park, or by choosing a round table over a square one themselves?

To read the commentary on this article here on Archinect, go here.

What Starbucks Gets that Architects Don’t

2013-10-18T15:00:00-04:00

The round tables at Starbucks were the result of asking the question how do we want people to feel before considering what do we want them to do...Form follows feeling.

Christine Outram (currently the Senior Inventionist at Deutsch LA.) penned an essay regarding what architects can learn from Starbucks, when it comes to human centered design. Specifically, in terms of user research, ethnography etc.

Starbucks saves St. Louis "Flying Saucer"; Preservationists celebrate

2012-10-08T17:11:00-04:00

a Starbucks coffee shop opened its doors inside a renovated space-age concrete gas station at Grand and Forest Park boulevards, the subject to an intense demolition threat just one year prior. By the end of the day, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch broke the news that another chain, drug store CVS, was backing off its plans to demolish the elliptical mid-century modern AAA Building in Midtown. Within a few hours, months of protest ended in celebration.

This Starbucks cafe is made from shipping containers

2011-12-08T12:19:00-05:00

We already suspected the Starbucks of the future might be serving a whole lot of juice. Now, it looks like tomorrow’s Starbucks cafes might be rectangular and metal — and look suspiciously like shipping containers.