Japanese studio I IN drew on traditional Thai festivals, where thousands of paper lanterns are released into the sky, when creating the interior for the first Blue Bottle Coffee cafe in Bangkok.
The interior of the cafe is dominated by the large Blue Lantern installation above the coffee counter.
"The main idea came from Thailand's traditional lantern festival," I IN co-founder Yohei Terui told Dezeen. "We wanted to capture the feeling of a lantern floating in the sky and bring that into the space in a contemporary way."
"This became what we call the Blue Lantern, a large sculptural element extending from the ceiling above the drip station," he continued.
As it is the brand's first cafe in Bangkok, the studio wanted to design a "bold and dramatic" space that would also nod to local culture.
"The lantern idea came from the local culture, and from the beginning, we wanted to make it as large and impactful as possible," Terui said.
"We placed it at the location where customers first enter the cafe, so it would immediately catch their attention and become a symbol of the store."
The furniture and fixtures in the 178-square-metre cafe were made from teak wood, a material that is often avoided in the West due to concerns about illegal logging, but which is local to Thailand.
"Every country has their own approach to natural materials, depending on what is locally available and traditionally used," Terui said.
"In Thailand, especially in the north, teak is a very familiar material and commonly used in the interiors and architecture."
Blue Bottle Coffee cafe Bangkok is drenched in blue hues, with the brand's signature colour used for the lantern and coffee counter.
For the rest of the space, I IN chose a pale blue colour to "give guests a sense of brand identity and the feeling of a sky," Terui explained.
After visiting the city, the designer also decided to add gold details to the cafe interior.
"The idea of bringing gold into the interior actually came from my personal experience of walking around Bangkok," Terui said.
"As you walk through the city, you suddenly come across these beautiful, strong gold colours, and I found this contrast very unique," he continued.
"It was something that stayed in my memory of Bangkok, and I wanted to bring a little of that feeling into the cafe."
I IN also recently designed the concrete Andersson Bell store in Tokyo and clad the Human Made store in Seoul in handcrafted tiles.
The photography is by Pichan Sujaritsatit.
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