Arthouse Cafe

What happens when you walk in a coffee shop and have difficulty distinguishing between the wall, the ceiling and the floor? This was the question Joey Ho had probably in mind when he decided to experiment with the design of an innovative café built for the homonymous art gallery occupying the first two floors of the same building in Hangzhou, China. Wishing to keep a distance from the conventional configuration of warmth and coziness attributed to most contemporary coffee shops, the main objective was to manipulate the relationship between customer and space through the creation of a three-dimensional interior. With massive wooden-framed triangular windows substituting the walls and triangular surfaces interfering with most elements of the furniture, people are brought into a new stimulating geometric context in which the static boundaries of a room are completely re-interpreted.

Aside from the altered perception of space and the dizziness feeling sparked by the blurry separation of ceiling and floor, the choice of a very essential furniture style also contributes to the new sensorial experience.  As a matter of fact, the plain disposition of the light coffee tables and chairs together with the use of very few materials such as timber, marble and glass all encourage a minimalist atmosphere and aim at not distracting the user from the focus of the architectural project: the dynamicity of space.