ANTILOPE / Mass Operations – 【Architectural CAD Drawings】

Architects: Mass Operations
Location: Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico
Author Architect: Viviano Villarreal-Buerón
Area: 80.0 m2
Project Year: 2018
Photographs: Lorena Darquea

Other Participants: Nelson Alejandro Ontiveros

How would Wes Anderson design a chapel for Coffee?
Antilope Café is a new coffee Brand in Mexico. The 80m2 space is located within the Arboleda Development in Monterrey México and it represents the brand´s first physical space where the marriage of Chiapas coffee beans and Dulcinea´s kitchen (a local restaurant by the same owners) takes place. The design came through a series of challenges.

On one hand, we needed to provide a fresh and unique space that could assimilate the identity and values of the Antilope brand, the quality of its coffee and food, on the other hand, we needed to avoid having the space feel gender specific. We proposed to create an open and bright space suitable for the worshiping of coffee — A chapel for coffee.

Influenced by the hard symmetries in Wes Anderson movies, we split the space into a feminine side (pink) and a masculine side (green), which are then separated or joined by diagonals within the flooring and dropped ceiling patterns. Each side is designed to enjoy coffee at a different pace, while the green side is designed in order to spend longer periods of time and enjoy the food, the pink side is designed for a faster in and out experience, with high tables that are suitable for a quick espresso (standing up, as the Italians do).

The references to a chapel are everywhere, from the large floating marble frame “The Altar”, where the barista “Priest” supplies you with your coffee as if it were your communion, all the way to the high tables that are formed from marble that falls from the heavens and simulate a confessional, where one can sit face to face to one’s cup and confess, in company or by oneself.