An organic palette of materials and color welcomes visitors when entering this tiny and warm coffee roaster in Gunma, Japan. Snark Inc. was commissioned to renovate a building used as an office and turn it into a specialty coffee roaster and coffee stand. It has a workshop equipped with three roasting machines, a coffee cupping space, and a coffee stand where customers can taste freshly roasted coffee beans.
To fit all the necessary functions for the shop into the limited space of 41㎡, they placed a large display shelf to divide the seating area and the workshop instead of building walls to divide the space. Customers can see the workshop through the display shelf from the seating area, providing an inclusive customer journey.
Snark used lumber-core plywood for the counter, the bench, and the display shelf in the center. Normally, the edges of the plywood are covered with edge banding or other materials. Still, since this is a place to show the process of roasting coffee beans and serving them as beverages, they left the edges exposed so that the finishing process of building materials can be seen. By showing the finishing process of the materials and the common elements to the original building, cohesiveness was achieved rather than a contrast between the old and the new with the original building.
