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Architects: Atelier Waterside
- Area: 9 m²
- Year: 2021
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Photographs:Chao Zhang
Text description provided by the architects. This is a takeaway coffee shop. Based on the first floor of a commercial office building near Huan Shi Dong Road, the ring road of Guangzhou City, it has only 9 square meters of indoor area. To differentiate and form an impression of the shop at the level of the street interface, we shaped our image through an independent structure, avoiding the common flatness when the façade is only a thin surface on the building’s finish. Meanwhile, we want to make the coffee shop’s facade a relatively closed way, keeping it somehow mysterious and facing the bustling street with ease.
We used 30 x 30 mm pine timber as a basic structural component. The pine timbers are screwed together to form a 'roof frame', overhanging outwards to act as a sheltering roof covered with aluminum panels. At the bottom, the timbers are converted with stainless steel angle yards to drop the weight of the roof frame on the ground. Because the whole timber frame structure is disconnected from the stone curtain wall, we set stainless steel sheets protruding from the stone parting joints of the original curtain wall, pulling on the timber frame to resist the lateral thrusts. By controlling the density of horizontal pine grids, the exterior is still a closure while allowing natural light into the interior. At the same time, the shop staff's sense of control and security could be taken care of indoors. The horizontal pine grids are also covered with the material of bent aluminum panels, which can reduce the rainwater’s erosion of the wood and variate light and shadow of the façade.
The entrance of the façade can be opened in three different ways. In addition to the downward-folded window form, one of the walls can be opened at a 45-degree angle in the direction facing the building's occupants through the integration design of concealed folding doors and windows, transforming into a take-way ordering window. When the wall opens outwards at 90 degrees, it becomes a daily entrance for the shop staff. The folding wall is a flexible strategy to cope with urban management policy, and let the image of the store become lively in addition to mysterious.
