by dhanie & sal uses skeletons and x-rays for the design of cafeterias
In the front yard of a house in a residential area of Bandung, IndonesiaSawo Rontgen is a little outdoorsman coffee shop which is inspired by the name of its street. Sawo Coffee’s second home is on ‘rontgen’ street, whose name translates to ‘x-ray’ and the site has a strong link to medical facilities. Playing with this concept and relying on it to design the visual identity of the project, Dhanie & Sal created a structure of bare steel beams, wrapping its exterior in a delicate semi-transparent skin. The coffee is lined with glass bricks stacked in a geometric composition and acid glass exuding a hazy visual element meant to resemble the skin-and-bones quality of the rontgen visual.
all images courtesy of Dhanie & Sal
sawo rontgen takes shape as a semi-transparent floating box
To achieve a ‘rontgen-like’ character, Dhanie & Sal explored different customs of transparency and experimented with materiality and structural qualities. In a floating box composition, the architects he laid out glass bricks along the front patio to demarcate the space as a cafe, forming a pseudo-border against the house. Acid glass wraps around the pavilion like a delicate frosted skin, concealing elements of the existing home while rejuvenating it with an additional layer without significant alterations. The juxtaposition of the two new modern materials against the exposed steel beam structure and the enveloping natural materials results in a broad spectrum of visual transparency that remains sensitive to the context of the structure.
Sawo Coffee opens its second home in a residential area of Bandung
Dhanie & Sal compose the glass bricks in a zig-zag pattern to ensure a geometric visual feature, as well as a strong connection with even weight distribution. Once laid, the bricks were stretched to create vertical spaces between them, allowing airflow in and out of the wall and reducing material usage by twenty percent. In an extension of the wall pattern, which initially emerged as a pragmatic approach, this later became a definitive language throughout Sawo Rontgen.
The glass pavilion contains an all-white coffee bar, a distinctive feature of Sawo Coffee, which greets customers as they enter the coffee area. Hidden inside the box is an outdoor seating area arranged in a flowing circular shape, taking its cue from the brand’s logo. Its strong shape and connection to nature evoke a calm environment for guests to relax. Next to the pavilion, a steel staircase leads to the interior living area on the upper floor.
a circular outdoor seating area emulates the Sawo Coffee logo
Dhanie & Sal juxtaposes glass materials to create a broad spectrum of visual transparency
