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Architects: RENESA Architecture Design Interiors Studio
- Area: 1200 ft²
- Year: 2023
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Photographs:Niveditaa Gupta
Text description provided by the architects. Staying true to the studio’s penchant for a design that is expressive, bold, and well-rounded in its identity, V-Spot Café carves a rightful niche for itself, celebrating the almost theatrical DNA of the venue!
Situated in Chandigarh’s primo commercial hub, this bistro also poses as the city’s first all-vegan and gluten-free haunt. Making the cuisine more accessible to its patrons and enthusiasts, the designed venue is geometrically charged and reimagines the conventional perception of spatial architecture.
Leveraging their freedom of interpretation from the client’s end, the studio instinctively took to a pared-down design vocabulary. The intent while honing the identity of the café was to express what a vegan hospitality space would look like in their creative vision. A compact, rectilinear plot sat flanked on either end by volumes of the adjoining buildings, presenting the design team with petite square footage accessible from one end of the site. Sheathed by a matrix of white and green square tiles, the façade reveals slivers of the inside, beckoning one closer. Monochromes, a zesty tint of lime green, and a graphic quality surge through the two-leveled venue, painting vivid imagery that draws one in.
Whisking one away into a playful realm of color and pattern-play, the interior of the dual-leveled café lures one to loosen their grasp over the mundane and conventional! The visual grammar is a subtle blend of nostalgia-driven and futuristic sensibilities. Referencing the buzz and effervescence of the 80s diners, crossed over with the edgy involvement of hues, V-Spot Café illustrates the coming together of two divergent eras with surprising ease! The simplicity of the material palette engaged, and confident accents of color pose as the venue’s most potent facets, conjuring an ambiance that complements the offerings of the café. Romancing the predominantly linear forms across the spaces, the modest square subway tiles contrasted with black grouting weave together a contiguous canvas, elevating the impact of the rather unassuming material! Splicing its way across the monochrome expanse, the almost chartreuse hue energizes the areas, creating fleeting visuals of movement in the dialect of color.
On the ground level, an axial-form blueprint has been dovetailed with curved, booth-style, and flexible seats to create an experience that draws one closer to the venue’s core. The layout on the other end has been designed to function as an open coffee bar that occupies an apsidal form, creating a curvilinear definition within the straight-lined flow of the floor. The ingenious play of materials creates an uninterrupted composition that merges the interfaces of the ceiling, walls, flooring, and furniture that rests layered over it. The animated character of the spatial elements breathes life into its dimensions, warping the relationship amidst the two-dimensional planar and three-dimensional volumetric.
Bespoke elements such as the industrial-style suspended and wall lighting, strategically positioned mirrors, and brimming planters further enhance the experience of the café, reiterating the oscillation amidst design styles. The lush foliage of the indoor plants sprouting from the built-in planters fittingly contrasts the geometric omnipresence, marrying organic and structured silhouettes. Journeying across the levels, the sculptural staircase takes on a subway station-like demeanor, vibrantly bathed in the statement green-hued tiles. The walls are adorned with alternating motifs by creating a graffiti-inspired checkerboard of patterns.
The upper level houses the sunshine-laden alfresco terrace space. Canopying the zone, a glass ceiling frames views of the skies while light peers into the heart of the dining area. Constructed around a focal embedded tree feature, the terrace hosts fixed and counter-style seats that make for a snug congregational spot while echoing a homogeneous design ethos of the lower level. Heading compellingly in the direction of an uncharted design language, V-Spot Café is a mosaic of its many simple yet integral constituents. With a unique collage of colors, building materials, and rhythmic imagery, the venue holds experimentation in great regard while shedding a newfound focus on the lifestyle and cuisine the brand envisions bringing to the city.
