Strong brew: 6 buzzworthy coffee shops

With creative designs that range from stark to sugary sweet, a slew of recently completed coffee shops are pulling an extra shot of personality. So how do you take yours?

01
Blue Bottle Coffee Kyoto Cafe
Kyoto, Japan
2018
Schemata Architects

Schemata Architects’ Blue Bottle Coffee Kyoto Cafe injects the brand’s West Coast roots into a machiya, a traditional Japanese townhouse. Characteristics of traditional Japanese architecture and the site’s 100-year-old history are made visible with its pebbled terrazzo, clay walls and an exposed roof that reveals its original structure.

02
Antilope
Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico
2018
Mass Operations

Mass Operations’ 80-square-metre Antilope Café in Monterrey, Mexico, is the coffee brand’s first physical location. The Wes Anderson-inspired ‘chapel for coffee’ has two designated drinking spaces – pink for fast uptake and green for lingering over a latte. Awash in ritual references, orders are placed at a large, floating marble ‘altar’, where a barista ‘priest’ hands over drinks as if it were communion.

03
Celsious
Brooklyn, New York, United States
2017
Theresa and Corinna Williams
Chris Teeter at Metamechanics

Designed by German-born-and-raised sisters Theresa and Corinna Williams with architect Chris Teeter of Metamechanics, Celsious – deliberately misspelt – is located in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The energy-efficient and ever-so-chic laundromat with a loft cafe is the ultimate multi-tasking space, with a colour palette meant to create a ‘clean-but-friendly’ feel. The sterility of the stainless-steel equipment is softened by warm yellows, welcoming corals and fresh off-whites.

04
Store D04 Drekka
Sofia, Bulgaria
2017
dontDIY

dontDIY’s Store D04 Drekka, situated near Slaveikov Square in Sofia, Bulgaria, is a small space that counterbalances its minimalist fixtures with a bright-blue colour accent. Despite its size, it manages to house two parts – one for preparing drinks and the other, featuring a large marble table, for hosting coffee workshops and events.

05
Juana Limón
Madrid, Spain
2016
Lucas and Hernández-Gil Arquitectos

Lucas and Hernández-Gil’s 50-square-metre Juan Limón coffee shop near the centre of Madrid uses the soft hues of baking ingredients to entice foot fall into the café. Whitewashed oak floors reference flour, while butter-coloured pale yellow tiles clad the counter and cash register and extend onto the gypsum-coated walls.

06
La Linda Bakery Carrasco
Montevideo, Uruguay
2016
Pedro Livini

Pedro Livini transformed a historic 1927 garden house in Montevideo, Uruguay, into La Linda Bakery Carrasco, an artisanal bakery and coffee shop. Intersecting the original structure is an extension along one side into the rear garden. An inverted V pillar acts an additional support to where the two structures meet, and allows the bakery to have glass walls that make the production sector visible from the courtyard seating area.

© Architonic