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Community Café, Stoke Newington
'Collaborating with Leo was really beneficial. She helped us think about the user experience and defined a colour and materials palette, meaning that together we could create a homely and effective space for this popular cafe.'
- Edwin Ryder, East JR
We were brought onto this project by our friends and collaborators, joinery and construction company East JR to develop the overall design vision for Esters cafe.
The starting point for the new design was the bar, as it marks the centre of all activity in the space. We fell in love with the colour and texture of Viroc (a product from Portugal that mixes wood fibres and cement) and felt this would be ideal for the bar, which we also wanted to have odd geometric angles to it, to provide something unexpected in the space.
We knew a terracotta colour for the padded bench seats would be a perfect contrast to the yellow Viroc, and these were immaculately upholstered by Charlotte Ferreira.
Given how popular the cafe is and yet how tiny the space, we needed to make the limited seating capacity work as hard as possible: the irregular geometric design for the tables meant that some tables were kept very small but they could be cleverly grouped together or kept separate.
