Follow this tag to curate your own personalized Activity Stream and email alerts.
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... View full entry
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. — Hypebeast
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... View full entry
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. — New Atlas
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: StarbucksJust last month, Starbucks announced its plans to design, build, and operate... View full entry
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... View full entry
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.
— washingtonpost.com
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? — archidose.blogspot.com
To read the commentary on this article here on Archinect, go here. View full entry
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. — Medium
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. View full entry
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. — americancity.org
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. — blog.seattlepi.com