Fiona Drago Architect adhered to the ethos of First Love Coffee by designing a space with sustainable materials and natural colors to mimic the coffee they produce in Melbourne.

The flagship store for specialty roaster First Love is a showcase for its coffee beans and a stand-up coffee bar offering takeaway breakfast, lunch and pastries.

The brand’s focus on provenance and sustainability is exemplified through natural materials such as cork, copper, marble, terracotta and rose gum. The colours of the materials reflect the spectrum of reds and greens in raw coffee beans.

Cabinets are clad in brushed copper; countertops are made from Verde Alpi green marble. Green terrazzo, which contains Verde Alpi marble chips, sweeps across the floor and up the main wall. It unifies the compact space and provides a coherent backdrop for the retail display of the coffee beans in wall alcoves that are lined in peach-coloured terrazzo with terracotta chips.

A standing bar crafted from rose gum extends along the north-facing windows and is a spot where customers can sip their coffee and look out to a pocket park. The various shades of green in the space blend with the colours of the park.

The three-dimensional cork ceiling provides acoustic comfort and blends with the colour and texture of the precast concrete columns. The light fittings are all made locally.

The space is compact. It is 52 square metres and 3.4 metres wide, narrowing to 2.6m wide at some points. It has full-height glazing on three of its four walls and has high visibility on one of the city’s busiest streets.

There are no partition walls or full-height cabinets in the space in order to keep it as open as possible. This strategy also provides the opportunity to celebrate all the operations of a cafe, including the back-of-house area.

Design: Fiona Drago Architect Photography: Rebecca Newman

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