In the heart of Kobe’s bustling Hankyu department store in Japan, Japanese studio Keiji Ashizawa Design has sculpted a quiet, luminous interior for Blue Bottle Coffee—an intervention that’s as much about civic rhythm as it is about caffeine.
The 173-square-metre space, while nestled among apparel boutiques, asserts its own voice through a refined play of materials, hues, and architectural gestures. Central to Ashizawa’s approach is the use of the shop’s five generous display windows—not as passive thresholds, but as active, spatial dialogues with the city beyond.
One of these windows has been transformed into a street-facing take-out counter, elegantly bridging interior hospitality with urban flow. The remaining apertures host vivid blue seating, a chromatic jolt against the otherwise organic palette of oak wood and terrazzo. This careful choreography of form and color enlivens the café without disrupting its calm, reinforcing Blue Bottle’s now-global aesthetic language of tactile restraint. The seating—realized in partnership with Japanese wood specialist Karimoku—anchors the space in a domestic vernacular, subtly nodding to the cultural intimacy of coffee rituals in Japan.
Geometries collide and harmonize throughout: rectilinear stools and benches echo the architectural facade, while circular tables and large disc-shaped pendant lights introduce softness and rhythm. These raw aluminum pendants, suspended in equidistant alignment, orchestrate the verticality of the space and elevate its industrial bones into something almost ceremonial. Beneath them, a subtly polished patch of concrete floor—sanctioned as a spatial demarcation—grounds the design with quiet authority.
A final layer of intention arrives through Ashizawa’s calibrated use of color. Yellow punctuates concrete corners, balancing rawness with warmth, while saturated blues offer contrast and energy. Rather than overwhelming, these gestures resonate with the understated confidence of a designer who knows when to speak, and when to listen. The result is a space that doesn’t shout for attention—but rewards those who pay it.
