Project Description
The 950 square foot Wicker Park store uses a curated material palette and thoughtful lighting design to differentiate the experience of its servers and customers. The use of natural wood inside the cafe contrasts with the bright red espresso machine and the sleek modern textures of the base building’s façade. The primary material palette is Douglas fir, concrete and white quartz. Douglas fir is used throughout the store and finished in different ways to define space and function. Pickled vertical slats line the café walls creating a soft, warm shell while ebonized and oiled wood define the various functions within the space.
A wooden volume houses the coffee bar and showcases common back-of-house components which highlight the lab-like quality of Intelligentsia’s process. Conceived as a Matryoshka Doll, the coffee bar nestles inside a Douglas fir volume whose ‘top’ lifts. The ‘top’ is set at eight feet high providing a more intimate experience between barista and customer. White quartz countertops and an illuminated stretch ceiling create the interior of the nesting doll and further distinguish and define the coffee bar. The volume is located towards the back of the store to decrease the perceptual depth of the café’s interior, foreshortening the seating space and creating a much more substantial presence on the sidewalk.
A field of warm-tone suspended incandescent lighting fixtures define the seating area made up of a long communal table, a bench which wraps the perimeter and a series of custom red stools. The design team collaborated with Aaron Bladon to develop stools of various shapes and sizes that create a dynamic seating area which adapts along with its inhabitants. The colored blocks are seats, footstools, side tables, or work surfaces, and at night, improvised sculpture by the baristas.