Retail Store and Cafe​

Heritage, Monument Class Fitout

Interior Design, Exterior Furniture Design, Lighting Design

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Project Brief

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Located in the Parade Ground of the historic Tai Kwun precinct, Metagram has designed the first Moleskine Cafe in Hong Kong, which was created through a collaboration with local artisan coffee house, nodi. 

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Tai Kwun is one of Hong Kong's most vibrant cultural hubs; the location was carefully selected as the home for Moleskine Cafe which was designed to celebrate art and culture by allowing patrons to take a moment to explore and discover their inner genius, enjoying a daily fix of inspiration along with their daily coffee.

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The site, Tai Kwun was previously a colonial prison, magistracy and police headquarters. It was refurbished between 2008 to 2018, enriching and improving some elements, while entirely retaining elements of the original architecture. The site itself is considered a Declared Monument in Hong Kong and thus is protected by some of the highest level of heritage controls in the city, heavily controlling the type and extent of any proposed built fabric.

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The Moleskine Cafe space itself is divided into two main sections, a rectangular interior retail space, accessible via two vaulted doorways with timber framed French doors, which exit to a dramatic public colonnade, ribbed with stone arches and still boasting the original stone block floors. The colonnade skirts the Parade Ground; a large open square within which a small area of Moleskine Cafe - nodi exterior seating is nestled up against the 4 storey Barrack Block.

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Internally, Metagram created an experiential retail-cafe space designed to allow customers to slow down and immerse themselves in gallery style creativity. The store's eastern wall features a 'wall of inspiration'; a  wide spanning display containing a hanging system developed by Moleskine to showcase their notebooks enriched with poems, drawings, doodles and musings, created by local artists or even customers and visitors. This curated display is dynamic and interactive, allowing customers sitting or standing, to get-close, to touch, and to be inspired. 

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The western and northern wall contain the retail components of store; modular shelving components adapted closely with Moleskine's display standards - ensuring that this new type of store would retain the well recognised and established Moleskine aesthetic. 

 

Metagram developed a 'pergola' style cafe component at the back of the interior space. Framed with an overhead structure, this design allowed for the cafe to clearly delineate itself against the retail, whilst offering a solution for hanging lights and signage, limited otherwise by heritage constraints. Whilst small, this minimalist design was considered with utmost efficiency to allow for speed, storage and functional F&B service.

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In the center of the store, a high-communal table was designed in order to allow for a 'gathering' style customer experience - facilitating meeting and discussion, whether over a coffee or a sketch. 

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Outside in the square, Metagram's challenge was to create an external seating area that would 'confidently occupy' a corner of the large square, whilst effectively representing the brand and connecting exterior to interior space. 

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Metagram designed a communal, mixed-mode furniture-scape centred around two large tables with built in parasols. Tiled in reflective, black, textured subway tiles, the repetition gives the tables a modular, heavy appearance and gravitas. Rectilinear polished marine-grade maple plywood seating and planter blocks were carefully positioned around these tables to provide protection and delineation to patrons enjoying the seats. Metagram carefully played with the height and composition of these masses to create an artwork of seating and tables in itself. 

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The Moleskine Cafe is destined to become not just a place to grab a quick coffee but will evolve into a space that makes customers want to linger and stay, to enjoy meaningful moments, and as well as creative moments, facilitated through the space and through the Moleskine identity.