LAM Café

The café sits in the city centre, a place where locals and visitors come for the coffee and for the space itself. Its name, lam, means louvers, and the word sums up both its structure and its idea.

A roof shaped like coconut leaves, an everyday sight in this coastal city, covers less than half of the site. The land was leased for a limited time, so construction had to be fast, cheap and easy to take apart, and timber louvers became the main design language.

The surroundings are a plain, untidy residential area, so the roof was shaped to screen what lies around and frame the better views. It has three layers: coconut leaves underneath, tiles in the middle and fishing nets on top. In time, plants will cover it and turn it into a green roof.

The louvers are more than a finish. They act as partitions and also carry loads. The rooms they form are neither as closed as a box café nor as open as a country one. Light and air pass through the slats, giving each seat its own play of shade and breeze.