Startlingly contemporary, multidisciplinary collective Uchronia returns with a futuristic interior housed within a Parisian Art Deco facade. Located next to Place Vendome on Rue Danielle Casanova, the building now houses Café Nuances, a new roasting house and urban coffee shop.

Once a grocery store in the 1920s, the heritage facade is still found in its original form. Its metal door with characteristic motifs of the period has inspired the wavy supports created by Uchronia, which, in the windows, artfully present delicate cotton pouches containing the precious beans.

Inside, the first room is almost untouched. Art deco materials and lines mingle with two brushed steel pedestals, creating a dialogue between the two periods. Marble walls, wrought iron and bevelled mirrors all interrelate with a sublime ceiling made of eglomise glass — a technique that consists of placing a sheet of silver or gold under the glass and drawing on it with a drypoint pen.

Far from the industrial language common in hospitality projects, this jewel box of a space is full of surprises. The eye is drawn through the three streamlined spaces to the glowing orange espresso bar at the end of the hall. Looking something like a space-age, galactic vessel, with a backlit gridded ceiling, this futuristic bar creates a perfectly unexpected setting to sit and enjoy an espresso.

Looking back from the bar, the second space comes into view as shelves form a coloured gradient of notched partitions. Rendered in a palette of colours taken from the fresco in the front in Kazus resin they hold neatly coloured packages of coffee from all over the world. Acting as a transitional space, a ceiling of mirrors also backlit, continues the dialogue between the entrance and the coffee bar, between the eglomise glass and the LEDs and between the expertise of the past and the present.

Embracing Parisian history and the urban environment, Uchronia expresses a love for colour and fine detail in a gesture that realises the refinement and nuance of the namesake brand.

[Images courtesy of Uchronia. Photography by Felix Dol Maillot.]