The beauty of a space doesn't lie in merely its aesthetics but the stories that inspire it where colours, textures and design all come together to form a narrative that uses visual language to create an environment rooted in symbolism. Those are also the principles of conceptual cafes that emphasize on architecture and design to communicate their ethos making them stand out in impression and experience. We have curated a list of some unique conceptual cafes across India that you should know about.
The Swirl
Inspired from their product itself — the swirl on the soft ice cream from the machine, the central focus of this dessert studio is the ceiling created with fabric to replicate the cool colours of ice creams employing a pastel colour palette of peach, blue and green. The lightweight, modular furniture comes in the same palette against a white room acting like a cavas for colour--blocked patterns to seamlessly blend the ceiling to the walls.
The Swirl is located in Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu and is designed by Architecture Interspace. Find more info here.
Myfresh Cafe
British Designer Ilse Crawford states in her debut book, "Angles reject us. Curves invite us". The same soft, feminine visual impact of curves are exhibited in this cafe with a fluid design and homogenous volume characterized by curvilinear ceilings and organic, free-form oak furniture. The dynamism of the space is balanced through a monotonal palette of beige and fawn shades to create a wholesome aesthetic imbuing My Fresh's motto of organic produce.
Myfresh is located in Panchkula, Haryana and is designed by LOOP Design Studio. Find more info here.
The Village Cafe
Reinterpreting rural architecture, this café draws from a minimal and decidedly raw palette of locally sourced materials to birth textures and volumes that represent a lucid memory of a village. Depicting the image of intersections, and quaint alleys in a traditional village, Monolithic concrete portals create an organic maze-like layout for the space with low-lying terracotta plastered walls as that of adobe villages. The cafe is split into two levels with spaces for both indoor and outdoor seating.
The Village Cafe is in Moradabad, Uttar Pradesh and is designed by Portal 92. Find more info here.
The Toilet Cafe
Yes, you read that right. This cafe was established in collaboration with the Safai Vidyalaya centre as a tribute to Padma Shri-winning Ishwarbhai Patel, popularly known as Mr. Toilet who through awareness programmes or lectures on sanitation across the country, brought awareness to manual scavenging and caste system in India. The seat in the cafes are toilet pots and the customers are paid to use the washrooms in the cafe. This conceptual cafe aims to help people get rid of toilet as an alien or elitist concept.
The Toilet Cafe is located in Ahmedabad, Gujarat and is designed by architect, Yatin Pandya. Find more info here.
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