Us V Them, Glasgow
Our client’s brief was to create an exciting new headquarters for Us V Them, a creative space for all to gather and enjoy the best coffee Scotland has to offer.
The space has two main functions, an espresso bar and a workshop space.
The espresso bar had to be designed to operate a high end coffee service and double up as a showroom for all equipment sales. In keeping with traditional stand-up espresso bars, the space was to have minimal seating with high tables around the perimeter windows.
Us V Them maintain and repair coffee machines, and so their space also needed to house a workshop with space for storage, stock parts, and engineering activities, which was visible but separate to espresso bar customers.
The design takes a light touch approach to refurbishment, peeling away layers of retrofit to work with the bones of the building as the old sandstone tenement walls and terrazzo floor were uncovered. Built into the space, across all its uses, and all its existing materials, in a really simple and legible way.
The principle design concept wraps timber cladding around the space, to create a legible and solid ‘base’, a nod to the unit itself, the remaining ‘base’ of a historic tenement.
We worked with ThreeFourFive Joinery, to make the timber panels off-site using CNC machining techniques – resulting in an engineered and robust finish which really aligns with the Us V Them brand, and also gives the space its own unique character and identity.
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Client
USvTHEM
Value
Undisclosed
Status
Completed August 2020
Collaboration
ThreeFourFive joinery