Icon Coffee

Melbourne, Australia

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Icon Coffee

Melbourne, Australia

Firm

Pham Tuan Viet Architects

Type

Hospitality + Sport › Restaurant

STATUS

Built

YEAR

2015

SIZE

0 sqft - 1000 sqft

BUDGET

$10K - 50K

Photos

Viet Pham (1)

The Icon Café, located within the new Icon apartment building by Pace Development, lies on the corner of St Kilda Road and Wellington Street in St Kilda. The main concepts of the Icon Cafe design are atmosphere, materiality and light. The Icon Cafe was envisioned as a place of escape for busy people inspired by the vibrant St Kilda area and Scandinavian approach. The cafe has a small footprint of 58 square meter so our design strategy was to use neutral and light colours for ceiling, walls and floor to make the space more spacious. It is in stark contrast with the more colourful metal cladding of the apartments above. We also minimised the number of tables to keep the space more open and designed long benches for seating. The existing double frontage with glass curtain wall creates illusion of a larger space. The existing raw concrete column is kept to remind people of its connection to the building above. The material palette is minimal with American Oak veneer cabinets, bench top and bench seats with Ghost Gum stained finish. We paid careful attention to detailing and how stone, wood and glass are put together. Hidden warm light under bench top and cabinet creates a sense of floating in space. In terms of sustainability, we used mainly timber which can be recycled and tried to take advantage of the found conditions of the site and turned them into part of the design. The plumbing fixtures were carefully selected to make sure they had an efficient use of water. The design took advantage of the northern aspect of the site and minimised the amount of artificial lightings use. The space is filled with natural light. In terms of artificial lighting design, we choose Australian handmade porcelain pendant shades with ES lamp holders to enable the client flexibility on future LED lamp choices as technology evolves.

Photography - Tatjana Plitt