Alt Roastery

Authors’ Comment

Physically located in Bucharest and deeply placed in every coffee enthusiast’s heart (architects are no strangers to it), the interior design of Alt Roastery coffee roasting place, was from the start a project for which the architecture office worked with a guilty dose of enthusiasm. The project theme was clear from the get go in our minds despite the constant efforts of our clients to offer all specific details for which we were more than grateful along our collaboration. Being the client’s close-to-heart project for many years, who by the way are masters of the coffee mantra (they also own a quite succesful coffee shop to which we gladly return) the project theme was clarified from the start and it sounded like: „C: We want to build a coffee roastery! A: Did you choose a roasting machine? C: Yes, we did, it’s this one!”. As briefly stated in the short dialogue, the roasting machine it’s the main protagonist of this interior design and thoroughly dictates the design style for the entire space.
Among all details of the complex machinery, the roaster and the more complex roasting process of green coffee beans, the aproximate 80 sqm area had to include a minimum space for serving coffee and seating area: „coffee must be savoured!”. That being said, the interior concept came as naturally: we placed the roasting machine closer to the street to capture the interest of curious visitors, we organized the mini-bar and we created a space meant for serving and seating. Functionally wise, half of the interior space had to be given to special storage rooms necesary to the preparing process, beans sorting, bean bags storage green/roasted, packaging area, restrooms and toilletes.
Being the dominant and most important to the design, the roasting machine transcends to being an exhibition object that dictates the industrial tone of the design with it’s concrete walls, floors and furniture props with metalic details. Out of operational reasons, the roasting space had to be enclosed by glass walls, separated physically but not visualy. Partially covering walls with wood and the custom wood furniture perfectly balance the stiff industrial atmosphere. The project is curently on hold but out that guilty enthusiasm of which we were talking about we couldn’t keep it to ourselves.