Café Canelé
Antwerp, 2024
Café Canelé sits in the glazed burgundy tile-clad plinth of the Fierens blocks. The building was designed by Gustave Fierens in a moderate modernist style with Art Deco features. After the recent renovation, the double-height plinth is delivered shell with floor fields cut out behind the façade and a mezzanine without stairs. The new interior continues to work with what is available and picks up the narrative of the existing architecture in a design of today. It wants to break with a material-consuming temporality of interiors in hospitality and retail that are completely detached from the building in which they are located. Connecting with the architecture of the Fierens Building builds a contextual interior that integrates longer-term meanings that provoke further long-term reuse.
To position the new staircase, a narrow floor field is removed in the second bay of the structure. This leaves the double-height space in the first bay on the street side completely free to accommodate a sales and seating area. The staircase turns on the spatial effect of “rooms” in an open plan. The front-rear view, from the street to the inner area of the block, is enhanced by the diagonally connected seating areas.
A collection of seating is emerging at Café Canelé. Like a café, small tables and an elongated green upholstered bench sit against the wall in front, with a mirror above them. Diagonal to this, in the space that opens onto the indoor area, is a round homey table that can accommodate larger groups. In the sunken window niche, with worktop as a window tablet, are small reading or workstations that also recur along the balustrade of the mezzanine. Further upstairs is a more formal table that invites consultation or work on the move. Along the storefront, robust wooden furniture in the color of the display cases is provided on the sidewalk. Together with the canopy, it provides fun in the facade.
The interior works around the idea of preserving and reusing existing materials to the maximum extent possible. The tile floor with its geometric motifs is a clear example. Damaged areas were locally repaired with (recovery) tiles. This pieced together floor is like a continuous carpet in space. On the second floor, there was no floor finish and a new tile floor is provided that continues to work on the same themes with a sober geometry and color scheme. The colorful ground floor tiles provide the backdrop for chestnut-colored high-gloss varnished wood furniture for counter, kitchen and tables. The walls and ceilings are painted white where the shell is gyproc or completed with an acoustic ceiling. In the places where the concrete structure is visible and plastered old walls still exist, these are left visible as traces of the past, making the physical presence of the architectural structure in which the interior sits readable. Color is further brought into the interior through textiles in the form of wall curtains, upholstery, a paravent and “the curtain that is always open” from the water point. The textiles are mostly elaborated with the tectonics of parasols. That is with metal ribs, overlaps, seams and fabric tunnels as we know them from French coastal cities. With attention to the graphics of logo typography and signage, the showcase and interior are further refined.
Client: Café Canelé, Photography: Miles Fischler
