SOUL Roastery BMT

87, Nguyễn Khuyến, Thành phố Buôn Ma Thuột, Vietnam

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SOUL Roastery BMT

87, Nguyễn Khuyến, Thành phố Buôn Ma Thuột, Vietnam

Firm

am.at:design

Type

Hospitality + Sport › Restaurant

STATUS

Built

YEAR

2019

SIZE

0 sqft - 1000 sqft

BUDGET

$100K - 500K

Emerging in the early noughts in reaction to the over commercialization of chain coﬀee stores, boutique cafes began to reintroduce a sense of ‘authenticity’ by celebrating all that could be local and particular about the production and sale of coﬀee. Methods of production from the grind to the packaging are celebrated, anything that could yield an artifact was emulated, and communities were cultivated around a localized production and audience. The associated social benefits of building a community resonated with an endemic need in young people for a connection both to the realities of the world and each other. Combining these spaces with a parallel trend in open workspaces and ‘startup’ culture created a hybrid space that synthesized the need to be productive and the need to live meaningful lives.
The story of SOUL roasters is typical of many small cafe projects in Vietnam. Riding on a boom in boutique cafes that cater to a young mobile clientele, the spaces are proactively conducive to work and wellbeing, while having an aesthetic and amenities that are increasingly ubiquitous worldwide; a frictionless transaction. Cafes in Vietnam often go further and schedule social events, a function shared with larger co-working spaces and making the most of the large footprints of the hybrid workspace/residence buildings that contain them. The inclination to work in these spaces is shed in favour or a more publicly accessible source of social connection.

am.at:design was invited to design on this cafe project. The brief speciﬁed a space that was ‘humble’, inexpensive to build and deliverable within 3 months, which aligned with am.at:design's ethic of using local suppliers, and vernacular (if not traditional) construction techniques out of necessity and as a creative constraint. The clients envisioned the ﬁnished space as having an ‘industrial’ aesthetic as expressed by exposed structure and industrial ﬁxtures, which provided additional creative friction to drive the design that was eventually delivered.
The client’s choice of decor perpetuates a precedent of boutique cafes adopting the look of industrial roasting facilities, mining the ephemera of roasting coﬀee for inspiration. On one level it suggests a sense of transparency that reﬂects conﬁdence in the quality of the core coﬀee product; on another it indulges a customer’s fascination with the physical processes behind a product that is otherwise almost too accessible and less distinguished as a result. Altogether this creates a sense of authenticity derived from a connection to the labour involved in the creation of coﬀee, without compromising on convenience. The architects arguably arrive again at and incorporate this thinking while focused on playing to the strengths of the site, with architectural clarity and on facilitating the social functions of the cafe. The design is a response to three key site moves - an open plan, a generous forecourt and generous ceiling height.
The plan weaves a ﬁeld of diﬀerently sized spaces around a main serving space, coﬀee roasters and function room, ﬂowing from one into another. These connections create a loose poche of positive and negative spaces and their resulting connections. A visible frontage and connected serving space emphasises the depth of the forecourt, distinguishing the building from the street and providing views back out. The inner spaces are framed by enclosed coﬀee roasting and meeting facilities, highlighting the deﬁning functions of the cafe.The entire space retains its verticality in section, utilising the ceiling height and allowing light to disperse through throughout. They could be best described as having a convivial atmosphere - lively and visible, yet private spaces contained within and amongst large hollow ‘columns’.
The articulation of these columns and interior elements utilises a consistent three dimensional language of planes and folds. What is suggested in early concept renderings is a ﬁeld of structural elements and planes, an ongoing interest of the studio in creating complexity that borders on the irrational, but atomised in a way that suggests precision rather than randomness. Although digital modelling was involved in the design process, much of the ﬁnal iteration has more to do with a sensitivity to the size of surrounding spaces, and the aﬀective dispersion of light than with digitally generated design. It suggests an optimum design that is equally sensory and atmosphere, but reliant on the complete pragmatic resolution of the space. Echoing Thomas Kundig’s sentiment of whether modelling in a computing is modelling or simplying using a machine, much in the ﬁnal result is the result of more immediate, intuitive response to needs, but also a sculptural sensitivity to the light of the space and the composition of each column. This is surplus creativity, and has much in common with CRAB studio’s use of folded concrete walls used to create spaces and provide openings in a singular form.
The built result has expressed contrasting elements rather than the palimpsest of the initial concept, but it is an aesthetic that absorbs the realities of construction, highlighting an otherwise conventionally resolved structure as an selectively hidden, infrastructural datum for the sculptural elements; this gap perhaps suggests an ongoing object of interest in future projects from the studio.
The combination of exposed structure, open social space and choice of highlighted elements rediscovers the clients’ desire for a building the expressed their vision of coﬀee - that of authenticity attained through a certain rawness of treatment and transparency. A suggested interpretation of the key column forms is that they resemble plumes of steam from an espresso machine.

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SOUL Roastery BMT

87, Nguyễn Khuyến, Thành phố Buôn Ma Thuột, Vietnam

SOUL Roastery BMT

87, Nguyễn Khuyến, Thành phố Buôn Ma Thuột, Vietnam

Product Spec Sheet

Collaborating Firms

Team