Designed by Japanese architectural firm G Architects Studio, this coffee stand belongs to AoQ, a new brand established by Suetomi, the renowned confectionery shop in Kyoto. The stand is on Karasuma-dori street, which runs from the Kyoto train station, and is located on the ground floor of a two-story wooden building at an intersection surrounded by hotels and office buildings.
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- Photo credit: Daisuke Shima
The depth of the coffee stand is only about 1 metre and is so small and modest that it can almost be missed in the busy street. Since the depth of it is so shallow, a quick decision was able to be reached on the floor plan. The kitchen and the resting area were installed side by side, along the street in the front. Although the floor plan was decided upon almost automatically, more time was spent on what to do with the elevations. A dcision was made to study the vertical side – regardless of the interior and exterior of the stand – and an effort was made to chemically try to control the aging of the copper.
Copper foil was taped on the wall, and oxidized with soy sauce and chemicals. This was done to create a facade that resembles something that would be suitable for Suetomi’s, a long established confectionery shop in Kyoto, as well as to give it a rusty patina colour reminiscent of “Suetomi blue”, Suetomi’s corporate colour for the past seventy years.
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- Photo credit: Daisuke Shima
Suetomi’s flagship store is located just three minutes away on foot, so the desire was for the whole stand to function as a signboard, 1 metre thick, with the color, leading customers to the main store from the busy street. The patina colour was used in two areas: the eye-catching side facing the intersection, as well as in the resting area. Cityscape regulations control the use of facade colors except for natural materials. The use of the colours was permitted by the local government as it was not painted, but rather was created by the oxidation of the copper.
Soy sauce was adequately used to slowly let the copper corrode, generating the reddish brown colour, as well as ammonium chloride to quickly let the copper corrode, generating the patina colour. Without these substances, and if the copper had only been exposed to wind and rain, it would have taken about three months to achieve this reddish brown colour, and ten years to get the patina colour.
When the cafe is closed, the resting area is covered with a roll screen made of a mesh sheet originally used for the temporary scaffold of a building construction. When it is lit at night, it resembles a bamboo blind historically used by Japanese noble families, which lets you see through to the patina colour on the wall. It functions as a “street lamp” for pedestrians, but also as a billboard for the store.
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- Photo credit: Daisuke Shima
