Architects:OFFICE AIO

Area :130 m²

Year :2020

Photographs :Wen Studio

construction team :Beijing Yihao Building Decoration Engineering Co. Ltd

Principal Architect : Tim Kwan

Design Team : Isabelle Sun, Steven Xie, Siqi Yu

Lighting Designer : Yansha Qiao

Graphic Design : Kexin Xiong

The Client : Elle Cafe

City : Beijing

Country : China

Designed by OFFICE AIO, Beijing's new fashion cafe is Elle Cafe's second location in China. With an inverted T-shaped floor plan, the designers conceived a French sidewalk dining experience inside a shopping mall.

Play of Classicism for a dramatic spanning shopfront. Modern indoor commercial centers are designed with walkways carefully directed. They are often flanked by longwindedly two-dimensional advertisements or wide-open shopfronts. Each one is eagerly opening itself up loudly and entirely to the passing consumers. But the latest Elle Cafe design is a nod to "Art de Vivre" with the timelessness of classical tectonics. Coming from the west, one approaches the cafe's narrower wing with an exposed corner, implying a space that showcases art and the joy of dining. To distinguish the lifestyle from traffic along the corridor, OFFICE AIO designs a 4-meter high white aluminum screen that marks the border between the cafe and the mall, abstracting the sequence of a Doric column shaft. The resulted colonnade spans most of the elongated front, reminiscing a classical precedent -- the long East facade of columns of the Louvre.

Minimally, classical ornamentations are also implemented inside the restaurant. Custom-made column-like table stools and bar counter are made in oak, grounding the cafe with a sense of nature. Chequer parquet in muted terrazzo hues is diamond laid on the ground; its pattern echoed above by mirror tiles exuding order and grandeur. All of these impart a multi-faceted rhythm that presents tradition with a modern twist. A peek reflected by the mirror, a brush of the screen with fingertips enriches the passerby and patrons' experience by the contrasts of solid and void, flatness and depth, of social dynamics on either side.