Qualia Café / Atelier Waterside

Text description provided by the architects. Invited by the coffee and dessert brand “观粼QUALIA” o design its first store., We had the chance to renovate a historical tenement ’s ground floor on the road Wei Xin Heng Lu（维新横路）. The road Wei Xin Heng Lu is in a historic district on Pearl River’s north bank, named because it runs perpendicular to a main north-south Wei Xin Road (维新路. “Wei Xin”means restoration)，which now has changed its name to Qi Yi Road ( 起义路. “Qi Yi” means revolution) in 1966. It is flanked by a row of tenements that are three or four-story and constructed in concrete frame during the 1930s and 40s.

The brand “观粼QUALIA” specializes in luxury coffee and French desserts. Our design concept starts with the presentation of the French dessert-making process. Two black boxes, one large and one small, are carefully placed in the old rectangular building. The boxes were finished differently inside and outside, nested and covered in layers to make an image of French desserts’ cut-out sections. It provides people with a heterogeneous experience and also a sense of wrapping.

Starting from the entrance, the store rises step by step, dividing into three elevations in the section. The variation in elevation is to eliminate a sense of oppression by the entrance’s long depth.  Separated from the original walls of the old building, the newly elevated floor creates a contrast between new and old while storing the pipes and lighting.

There are other actions taken to create an old-new contrast. The ceiling retains the details of old plaster and concrete structure. A loft was newly constructed above the entrance to increase seating capacity, by which guests can look at the Madagascar almond trees and old tenements’ façade on the other side of street.

The loft extends outward as a platform for the air conditioning unit. Light aluminum-made customized wind-driven louvers fluctuate with the heat and air exhaust of air conditioning, trimming the equipment, and also making the doorway fluctuate. The fluctuation echoes metaphors of water, of which the brand’s name “GUAN LIN” is reminiscent in Chinese. In the coexistence and connection between old and new, in the interval of dessert and coffee, we can see and touch each other.