Blue Bottle Coffee Kobe Cafe

The cafe occupies the ground floor of a department store building in an old port district once laid out for foreign merchants. Many of the district’s western-style buildings survive, and the area still carries a distinctly foreign air. The host building only imitates that style: it is a newer block dressed to look historic, with luxury fashion boutiques on either side of the cafe.

The space handed to the design team was tall and generous. Rather than divide it, they gathered every cafe function into one freestanding island so the rest of the room could stay open and read as a single volume.

The island is built around a slender brass frame that holds the counter, the drip bar and the hanging menu boards. Its shine works as a quiet counterweight to the ornamented setting outside, one simple and clearly new object set against a backdrop of borrowed history.

Around it the finishes stay plain. White walls, an exposed ceiling and a pale concrete floor leave the brass to carry the room, while particleboard tabletops and light timber chairs keep the seating informal.