SHRINE OF COFFEE

competition entry for temporary garden pavilion

in collaboration with Edmund Limadinata & Amanda Lau
2022, NATIONAL GALLERY OF VICTORIA ARCHITECTURE COMMISSION

Shrine of Coffee

Melbourne is world famous for its coffee culture, however behind this façade lies a long process of coffee farming and processing – dehusking, drying, sorting, shipping, roasting and finally grinding before ending up in a richly flavoured liquid. Here we aim to evoke the visceral process of coffee making through landscape and architecture in a garden setting of urban Melbourne.

Seating benches peculiarly arranged in columns, coffee husk garden beds, tall narrow hallway space and the altar references spatial memories of coffee making; the coffee plantation, the drying of coffee beans, the warehouse setting and the coffee table – whilst providing spaces for conversation, respite and the experiential.

Coffee husk, a waste by-product could be reused in agriculture as well as ingredient for construction material and grounded coffee have had breakthrough research to be used as concrete ingredient. Interesting use of coffee stain on timber is experimented and burlap sacks as recycled natural and textural fabric material.

Sitting within Grollo Equiset garden, a tall coffee stained timber structure creates a kind of curiosity. A trail bed of coffee husk leads to an open area seating space. Here, the burlap sack padded seats are strangely arranged in columns, referencing columns of coffee bush plantations whilst also allowing coffee conversations with each other. An altar constructed out of grounded coffee admixture and coffee husk garden beds proposes a future of coffee waste. Within the tall narrow hallway, burlap sacks are hanged, splicing the space with interplay of natural light and periodically coffee scented fog is emanated through concealed fog machine, heightening the sensorial appreciation of coffee.

Coffee husk, burlap sack, coffee ground concrete, coffee stained timber and coffee infused fog inculcates the architectonic materiality. We hope not to just celebrate the memories of coffee making beyond the culinary amongst its almost-religious and passionate community, but also a glimpse of its consumptive process, toiling of coffee farming in the Global South, the waste generated and its hopeful future in a spatial experience, hence our proposal the Shrine of Coffee.