BLUE BOTTLE COFFEE, OLD TOWN Los Gatos, CA

How do you maximize comfort in a small public space? This cafe design explores how people navigate confined spaces and the architectural language of an optimized customer flow.

The angled bar layout, free of sharp corners, facilitates movement. Superquadrics, complex equations that yield rounded forms, inspire the shapes throughout, providing accommodation within the tight space and nodding to the mathematical nature of work in Silicon Valley.

The craft and quality of the materials reflect the care taken in the coffee service. The service bar is one solid, thirty-five-foot-long piece of heat-fused acrylic polymer (better known as Corian), which twists and turns through the space. Curved glass elements provide functional accents. The customer elements are built of ash wood to provide a warm, tactile contrast to the bar. A continuous concrete micro-topping covers the floor, bench seat, and support room, providing a rough textural contrast to the other, more refined elements and completing the palette of flowing surfaces.