Archinect - News

MILLIØNS pays deference to I.M. Pei with new café space for the Everson Museum

2024-08-07T15:00:00-04:00

A new café space from MILLIØNS at the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, New York, meant to showcase a 4,000-object donation from its namesake, Louise Rosenfield, is up and running inside I.M. Pei’s 54-year-old Brutalist masterwork.

Image: Iwan Baan

The project’s commission was won after an international competition organized by Syracuse University School of Architecture dean Michael A. Speaks in 2019. Coming out of the pandemic, the institution was looking to increase public access to its collection overall while finding an appropriate use for Rosenfield's ceramics collection gift. The rare bequest stipulated it would be made available for use by visitors in a reversal of museum policy.

Image: Iwan Baan

The Los Angeles-based studio’s intervention entailed adding a pair of triple-height glass towers that double as a visible collections storage facility and display cases to the building’s East Wing Mather Court area. The incorporation of these definitive 'curatorial' elements works t...

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...

Four stylish cafe/restaurant interiors by STUDIO BANAA: Your Next Employer?

2024-06-24T13:45:00-04:00

Following our previous visit to Portland-based LEVER Architecture, we are moving our Meet Your Next Employer series to San Francisco this week to explore the work of STUDIO BANAA.

Founded in 2015 by Nastaran Mousavi and Dane Bunton, the firm has built a portfolio of fresh, dynamic spaces defined by color, pattern, and personality. “Our design process is very collaborative, and we bring our entire team to the table and tackle it together,” Mousavi and Bunton told us in 2021 as part of our Studio Snapshot series. “Since we are small, our office structure is not as rigid as you see in bigger corporate offices, and each member of our team becomes involved in every aspect of a project.”

Over on Archinect Jobs, the firm is currently hiring for several positions at their San Francisco studio. For candidates interested in applying for the position, or anybody interested in learning more about the firm’s output, we have rounded up four cafes and restaurants featuring stylish, colorful interi...

Modellus Novus completes Frenchette Bakery redesign at the Whitney Museum of American Art

2023-11-10T12:07:00-05:00

Modellus Novus has completed its redesigned new Frenchette Bakery space at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City.

The project replaces the museum’s closed original USHG Restaurant on the ground floor with a new café that serves as the first flagship for the popular West Side eatery, which opened in October of 2020.

The plan retains as much of the open concept intended by Renzo Piano for the new eight-year-old museum, confounding a sense of interiority to “create connections between diners and their surrounding community.” Artist Rashid Johnson’s site-specific installation New Grace completes the design, complementing a 70-foot central light fixture above the bar that's made from wood and rice paper.

Photo by Adrian Gaut, courtesy Modellus Novus

The Whitney says the Bakery will help recharge their improved food and beverage program and will be joined later by an eighth-floor space also designed by the firm for 2024. Modellus...

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...

SYN Architects reactivates rural Chinese village hall through an elegant vaulted extension

2023-05-03T10:58:00-04:00

Beijing-based SYN Architects has offered a look inside their recently-completed Tiangang Village ‘Living Room’ in Baoding, China. The project saw the renovation and expansion of an existing village committee building, as well as the reactivation of surrounding buildings and outdoor spaces.

Image credit: ArchiTranslator

The original committee building was comprised of five single-story arches and porches, as well as sloping roofs and brick walls, all of which were largely hidden from public view. Taking the arches as inspiration, the design team expanded the building through an extension of the arches, creating a series of trumpet-shaped volumes with a thin, curving concrete shell structure.

Image credit: ArchiTranslator

In addition to the enlargement of the original five arches, the team also created a similarly-scaled arched volume along the wall facing the street, creating a public space adjacent to the building, and providin...

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...

This Wes Anderson-designed bar is retro with a capital R

2015-05-08T13:53:00-04:00

Filmmaker Wes Anderson has a knack for creating fictional spaces with attention paid to the last excruciating detail. His latest space is real, though, and even better, you can get a drink there. [...] Three new buildings, which were part of a century-old distillery and transformed by renowned Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, will now house art rather than alcohol. But for the thirsty there’s also a new bar, called Bar Luce, that Anderson designed himself.

Archinect - News

MILLIØNS pays deference to I.M. Pei with new café space for the Everson Museum

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

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

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

Four stylish cafe/restaurant interiors by STUDIO BANAA: Your Next Employer?

​Modellus Novus completes Frenchette Bakery redesign at the Whitney Museum of American Art

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

SYN Architects reactivates rural Chinese village hall through an elegant vaulted extension

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

This Wes Anderson-designed bar is retro with a capital R

Modellus Novus completes Frenchette Bakery redesign at the Whitney Museum of American Art