Living in the leafy Da’an district of Taipei comes with many perks, and one of them is good coffee. Although the area is already blessed with an abundance of cafés, the newly opened (beanroom) raises sipping the black liquid to an entirely new level. The café occupies a 132 sqm. (1,421 sq.ft.) space on the ground floor of a residential building, and features and interior design by Waterfrom Design, a design practice based in the Taiwanese capital. Given the fact that the front yard comes with a tall lush banyan tree with dense foliage, and because of this, the (beanroom) owners wanted to open up the space, and quite literally so, to optimise the café’s pull factor, and obviously, increase its turnover. The interior design has been developed on a budget, but hasn’t compromised the aesthetic one bit.
The approach has resulted in the use of packaging materials in a window installation of standardised hinges to decorate the façade. The packaging materials are colour-coded to differentiate the various flavours of coffee beans, and as guests select according to their personal preferences, the window installation shows an ever-changing colour layer. Upon entering the premises, a whitewashed setting unfolds, anchored by an elongated angular timber counter, serving as a reception desk and coffee tasting bar, seating only six people at a time, and flanked by a smaller equivalent which serves as a cashier desk and gift-wrap counter. The strikingly decorative sides of the counter comprise panels with a texture that’s inspired by the wrinkles and folds of burlap sacks brimming with coffee beans.
The aforementioned hinges have also been applied to create tiered wall-mounted shelving which displays (beanroom)‘s organic coffee bean collection and merchandise. The café’s lighting is subtle yet distinctive, comprising suspended light spots and slightly Alexander Calder-inspired light fixtures that hover over the two counters. Apart from serving the usual range of coffee concoctions, there’s a tasting menu, which is available only on weekdays, and lists 16 types of coffee beans sourced from across the planet, and of which six are from small farm estates run by indigenous tribes in the Nantou, Chiayi and Pingtung counties in rural Taiwan. Interestingly, (beanroom) has stepped up its clients’ sensory experience as each bean recipe comes with a specially compiled, 30-minute playlist by local music medium YSOLIFE which guests can enjoy while sipping their coffee of choice. © superfuture
(beanroom)
No. 20, Lane 40, Lane 181, Section 4, Zhongxiao Dong Lu (Da’an)
106075 Taipei
Telephone +886 2 27111808
Daily 2pm-8pm
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