Bringing Melbourne-style café experience to Malang City, East Java, this ET Tea Bar café has a laid-back and relaxed atmosphere where emphasis is put on the cafe's cosmic and playful drinks. Identifying itself as “The Happy Place”, ET Tea Bar's biggest mission is to provide a light, playful spatial experiences and leave an impression of “happiness” for everyone who visits. The narrative is based on the story of the alien's arrival on earth, with the warehouse as their hiding place. It has a high volume, semi-futuristic and playful vibe, reflected through color blocking, neon light, wall panelling, and accent holographic sticker as the main design element. Neon light gives a playful and welcoming vibe to the space from the refraction and reflection in colours of light, we deliberately put the neon light at the entrance area to strengthen the impression of extra-terrestrial effect. This place which served as alien’s base on earth is being disguised as halfway house , decorated with plants collected by aliens during their time on earth which are placed on pedestal to highlight the collection. The combination of stainless material, exposed brick and holographic sticker also gives a semi-futuristic and playful yet casual impression at the same time. The narrative continues where the aliens enjoy connecting with humans, disguising themselves as the ET Tea Bar team, turning the warehouse they find into a cafe with a cosmic experience, and selling special nebula-inspired drinks so that humans will become their friends and be happy in their place. The branding consultant also supports this concept by presenting pop-culture elements and making several design characters such as alien, Space Cat, and Astronaut to reinforce the concept. Together these elements make the café a happy cosmic place to be in. We believe a good design need to address our client’s concern and essentially provides a good solution. Where the design following the principle of form follows function, another key consideration is the Covid 19 pandemic condition. Limited material availability and delivery lead time made us reviewed some of our material choices. Hence we pivoted to use local materials and craftsman to ease the transportation restrictions. Further adjustments are made in the layout configuration to adhere to the social distancing requirements imposed in this pandemic condition. While doing this we also tried to keep the aesthetic appearance intact. We have considered user’s flexibility by introducing various seating arrangements from loose seating, amphitheater seating, counter seating, and coworking style seating so customers have flexibilities to choose the type that suits them the most . While this futuristic concept calls for a non-conventional construction technique and unique material strategy, to achieve this desired effect we put tremendous effort into the sourcing of furniture. Besides that, the construction drawings have been simplified according to local skills and techniques. Designed with sustainability in mind, skylights are introduced to bring in natural lighting and reduce reliance on artificial lighting, so it could help to save on operational cost. Local sourced boulders are used to create the raised floor. The partitions from indoor to outdoor could be opened , which allows the fresh air exchange between inside and outside area. This reduce reliance on air conditioning , and tapping on the natural cool temperature of Malang city. All materials are selected with less porosity in mind, easy to be maintained and wiped down so that a clean environment can be achieved. All padded detailing that uses fabric material is changed to synthetic leather to reduce the use of material with high porosity and easy to be wiped down. We can conclude that the ET Tea Bar in Malang is one of a kind cafe with a touch of sci-fi elements designed with aesthetic consideration and safety of customers in mind. The result is a confluence of all the elements envisioned by the client, dreamt by designers, and enjoyed by customers.
ET Tea Bar
Conteur Interior and Avere Design
Bronze
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Benjamin Kaplan
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I enjoyed reading about the alien c...
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Karol Suguikawa
Creative Director
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8
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7
6.75
Yanfei Li
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at 8877 Interiors
6
5
5
5
5.25
Alberto Martinez
Sales Manager of Central Europe
at Andreu World
5
6
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5.75
Jayati Sinha
Physical and Digital Experience Designer
at Fjord @ Accenture
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Ekaterina Elizarova
Founder and Creative Director
at Elizarova Design Studio
6
7
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7
7
Marjan van Aubel
Solar Designer
at Marjan van Aubel Studio
5
7
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6
6.25
Alexander Fehre
Founder
at Studio Alexander Fehre
5
6
7
6
6
Studio Lotus
Architect and Interior Designer
at Studio Lotus
5
5
6
5
5.25
Julien Sebban
Architect
at Uchronia
7
6
6
5
6
Olga Sundukova
Cofounder
at Sundukovy Sisters
5
6
6
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5.75
Andrew Mcmullan
Director
at Mcmullan Studio
5
5
5
5
5
Designer
Client
Labore Group
Floor area
300 ㎡
Completion
2020
Interior Design Consultant
Interior Design Consultant
Branding Consultant
Interior Photographer
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