Raise a Mug to National Coffee Day with 7 Energizing Cafés
September 29 is National Coffee Day, and to celebrate, we’re serving up these seven cafés with designs ranging from the serious to the sublime.
1. KOGAA Utilizes Local and Raw Elements for Prague Café
Typika “is a specialty café with care for locally-sourced, raw ingredients,” says Alexandra Georgescu, who designed the space with her cohorts at Czech firm KOGAA Studio. The aesthetic is similar: local and raw. The team hand-cut and arranged terracotta water drainage pipes into walls, screens, and faces for the counter, creating a minimal but eye-catching op-art depth. — Jesse Dorris
2. X+O Blends Laid-Back Lush With Australian Gastronomy for the Full Circle Café in Bali
The airy Full Circle Café in upland Bali blends the Indonesian island’s laid-back lushness with Australia’s passion for flat whites and smashed avocado. The 120-seat café-restaurant in Ubud represents the shared vision of client Expat Roasters, a specialty coffee producer, and Sydney’s X+O design firm, led by principal Rebecca Vulic. — Jeff Book
3. FORM Bureau Gives St. Petersburg’s Sight. Coffee and Dine a Fresh Spin on Nature
Sight. Coffee and Dine is located on the ground floor of a renovated, red-brick former factory building in St. Petersburg’s historic Petrogradsky district. The space was designed by Moscow-based FORM Bureau for its long-time clients, Artur and Zara Bersirov. The 1,615-square-foot space, which grew from a Lego Architecture model, is divided into two separate spaces: a casual, cafe-like entrance and a slightly more formal dining area, with a bold pink concrete bar at the center. — Jennifer Baum Lagdameo
4. Memphis Colors and Italian Tradition Mix in a Tricota-Designed Buenos Aires’ Café
With its geometric appeal and pink-and-blue palette, Duca Caffé & Apericena in Buenos Aires might bring to mind the Memphis design movement. But its inspiration was much closer to home, explains Ezequiel Norry, co-founder and designer of Tricota, who headed up the coffee and small-plates café’s design. The team hit upon the Italian concept of apericena, Norry notes, and took it as part of its name. “It’s a moment of the day where you drink and eat, sharing and talking with friends.”— Jesse Dorris
5. Batay-Csorba Architects Brews up Milky’s Coffee Shop in Toronto
Thousands of diamond-shaped pieces of natural and stained oak with Carrara marble inserts form paneling that transitions seamlessly from floor to wall to ceiling, wrapping visitors in a soothing yet energizing enclosure. —Annie Block
6. Bolt Design Group Serves Up a Tiny Jolt of Warmth in NYC’s Dan Jones Coffee Bar
In a place as dense as the Manhattan grid, every nook and cranny counts. This couldn’t be truer of Dan Jones, a new coffee bar in Midtown East that is tucked in a 400-square-foot space the size of a two-car garage. Designed by Brooklyn-based firm Bolt Design Group, the café features a swooping milled plywood slat-wall that curves upwards to meet a rippled, reflective ceiling. — Elissaveta M. Brandon
7. Bidgood + Co Infuses Victoria, British Columbia Coffee Shop With Pops of Color
When the Hey Happy coffee shop in the historic Market Square neighborhood in Victoria, British Columbia, expanded its interior space, owner Brad Holmes called on Kyla Bidgood, founder and principal of Bidgood + Co. Interiors. Working off of the café’s original industrial features and signature color scheme, Bidgood sought out to capture Hey Happy’s uplifting and casual essence. — Quinn Halman
