Shanghai-based design and research office Neri&Hu has created a cafe in Shanghai that evokes the feeling of a home for coffee roaster brand Blue Bottle Coffee. 

Named Blue Bottle Coffee Columbia Circle Cafe, the 156-square-metre building is situated within Shanghai’s Columbia Circle.

The region was first developed as a country club for expatriates in the 1920s, transformed into an industrial park in the 1950s with the construction of eleven new buildings, and most recently, in 2016, OMA undertook renovations to create a bustling mixed-use hub. 

The area is now regarded as one of Shanghai's most successful urban regeneration projects.

To reflect their brand value of community culture and encourage people to interact over coffee, Blue Bottle Coffee commissioned Neri&Hu to design a cafe in the southern part of Columbia Circle, where public cultural activity spaces are prioritized. 

Neri&Hu were motivated to ponder the essence of living in a situation where things around one is continuously moving and changing with the speed of the city, and to create an implied sense of domesticity, an imprint of "home."

"As Rachel Whiteread argues in her work "the connection between architectural absence and memory," the negative form of a once-existing building can be employed as a visual reproduction of "traces" that elicit sentiments of attachment to one's home," said Neri&Hu.

Utilizing a white suspended form in the negative shape of a classic roof, the studio creates the impression that a house was cast into place, complete with the corrugated lines of roof drainage imprinted on the surface.

Beneath it is a house whose finishes have been stripped back to the subtle outlines of a building footprint and traces on the surface and adjacent facade. It is all covered in a continuous surface of recycled clay bricks and plaster. 

The traces the building leaves in our individual or collective memories serve as a source of nostalgia and remembering, even though the building is no longer physically visible. 

When under the negative shape of the eaves, people may still feel the spatial experience of being protected by the roof even though the house is no longer physically present. 

Beneath the white mass are the multipurpose platform and coffee-making bar. After going through the main entrance, patrons can peruse books, choose products, and stand in line to place their orders next to the merchandise display area before taking a seat on the floor to have a cup of coffee.

In the interior, the studio used reclaimed clay brick, birch plywood, vibrated stainless steel, mortar, and plaster. 

There are tables and chairs arranged around the perimeter of the multipurpose floor, which occupies the center of the space and creates a circular flow. 

The "imprint," which has the central focus of an abandoned house, invites guests to participate in daily rituals as a community and take pleasure in brand-new opportunities for interactions and gatherings. 

Sketches

Diagram Detail

Floor plan

Section

Diagram Arch

Neri&Hu designed a pair of stores that feature a wooden house and a concrete dwelling inside the structures. In addition, the firm completed Sanya Wellness Retreat inspired by the ancient Chinese walled city. 

Project facts

Project name: Blue Bottle Coffee Columbia Circle Cafe

Interior design: Neri&Hu Design and Research Office

Location: Columbia Circle, Changning District, Shanghai, China

Completion: March 2024

Client: Blue Bottle Coffee

Gross area: 156m2

Partners-in-charge: Lyndon Neri, Rossana Hu 

Senior Associate-in-charge: Qiucheng Li

Design team: Xuan Zhang, Jiaxin Zhang, Greg Wu, Pinwen Zhang

All images © Zhu Runzi.

All drawings © Neri&Hu.

> via Neri&Hu

cafe Neri&Hu reclaimed clay brick Shanghai