“With its ‘Slow’ Coffee Theatre, hyper-local design, floating community gathering spaces and on-site bakery, Starbucks ‘The Bank’ is a glimpse into Starbuck’s vision of the future”.
“While over the last few years Starbucks has gone to great lengths to reinforce the superlative quality of its coffee and products, under the radar they’ve been re-defining the atmosphere in which we drink it. In Seattle, New York, London, Paris and now Amsterdam, Starbucks has been stealthily unveiling unique, highly individualized and local concept stores across American.
“As with all Starbucks concept stores, the Amsterdam shop will be a radical aesthetic departure. Under the direction of Dutch-born Liz Muller, Starbucks Concept Design director, more than 35 artists and craftsmen have kitted the subterranean space with quirky local design touches and sustainable materials. Local design details include Deft tiles, walls clad in bicycle inner tubes, wooden gingerbread biscuit moulds and coffee bag burlap, and a ‘tattooed’ ‘Delftware’ mural highlighting the important role 17th century Dutch traders played in exporting coffee around the world”.
The designers for this store have gone out of their way to integrate re-purposed design. As well as reclaiming the vault’s exposed concrete and 1920s marble floor, “the entire shop is kitted out in re-purposed Dutch oak - the benches, the tables and the undulating ceiling relief made from 1,876 pieces of individually-cut blocks. Also a radical departure from Starbucks house style are the various types of chairs and stools, reclaimed from local schools and spruced up”.
Special thanks to Contemporist for the above images.
