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<QSPKFDUGJMF°CFJKJOH>Beijing, China
Latitude Architectural Group
Cup One
Coffee shops are our new living rooms.
Well, actually, this trend isn’t all that
new; cafe culture has been around
in the West for centuries – think
Vienna, Venice and Paris. But it seems
nowadays we prefer coffee shops to
our own offices, living rooms, or even
parks. We hang out there, imbibing,
watching, thinking, writing, video-
gaming, Instagramming, flirting, sulking
or celebrating. It’s where we meet the
person we connected with through an
app. It’s where we update our Facebook
pages, or plan our futures. And thanks
to a couple of worldwide companies, it’s
by now where we’ve developed a set of
expectations regarding design.Cup One, in Beijing, is yet another
of the genre, trying to break free
a little, from at least some of the
cliches of current coffee shops. This
one is bright, white, open-spaced
and underdecorated. The principal
design decision involved wrapping the
curvaceous perimeter of the space with
a sitting bench, such that the middle
area of the cafe seems like a stage
or piazza. Helped by fairly high ceiling
heights, the space is unified for the
eyes, ideal for people-watching (and less
so for solitary introversion). The ceiling
is finished in a similarly curving step
that is meant to evoke, like the bench,
a coffee mug. This ‘fluid’ geometry rules
Cup One, and more or less focusses
attention on the serving counter area.
So we hope the baristas look good. The
flat sections of the ceiling are finished
in a triangular pattern of recesses
(with suspended globe light fixtures),
while corrugated aluminium is used for
the vertical faces of the curved coffer.
This is also used on the front of the
bar and for a wall at the entrance that
announces the brand. The streetfront
facade is glass, the better to make a
fishbowl of Cup One after dark, enticing
people into its bright nest.Photography by Hector Pei