A very dear friend of mine in Egypt asked me to design the renovation of one of his coffee shops in Cairo.
The space is 45 m2, but only about 3m wide, so there wasn’t much possibility for rearranging the space. My main task was to come up with a new design with moderate budget.
The café is located in a densely populated area of Cairo, visited mainly by young people from the neighbourhood, some of them friends and acquaintances of the owners, and some of them sports fans, who regularly watch football matches together.
I wanted to have a design element somewhere that would refer to the location of the café, Egypt, so I chose a carpet patterned wallpaper that give the space a nice ambience. In the narrow back section I wanted to create a seating area that would take up little space but still be comfortable. Therefore, I chose a long built-in bench with tables reminiscent of a fixed Middle Eastern tray and the additional seatings are provided by low ottomans that don’t take up too much space and therefore don’t interfere with the traffic flow.
As the owner is a coffee specialist and the café also offers speciality coffees and sells roasted and unroasted coffee beans, I wanted to make some reference to this too in the decoration, so I made cushions from coffee bags.
Other decorative elements were made from the coffee bags, and the shelves were decorated with various old coffee pots, referring to the wide variety of coffees that can be tasted here.
The wooden wall pannelling, ceiling lights and a few green plants create a welcoming, warm and inviting space.
