coffea SHED Columbia Circle Store / kooo architects

Text description provided by the architects. This site is located in Building 3 of COLUMBIA CIRCLE. Historically, this area served as the Columbia Country Club, a recreational destination for Western residents of Shanghai during the concession era. Following a renovation and redesign by OMA in 2018, it reopened as “COLUMBIA CIRCLE”. coffee SHED is a coffee agriculture retail space. It opens to the public square and the community and becomes a daily gathering place for residents. Coffee, agricultural and sideline products and daily necessities are sold here.

The SHED in the store name is inspired by the “shed” that can be seen everywhere in coffee production areas. The structure of a shed is very simple: a roof supported by pillars. Under the shed, farmers chat, rest and eat to relieve the fatigue of farm work. In the city, we also want to build a “shed” so that busy people can rest, gather, and communicate here happily.

We believe that a platform connecting urban consumers and agricultural products, such as coffee, should be situated within such a generous and open space. The design under the spacious “shed” uses corrugated metal panels commonly used in agricultural warehouses.

The easy-to-process panel integrates lighting and fire-fighting equipment such as fire sprinklers. By inserting fluorescent lamps into the gaps and embedding lighting rails in the beams indicating the corrugated metal panels, we have achieved a ceiling design that can adapt flexibly to variable display layouts. Additionally, we attempted to extend the same flooring material used for the square in front of the building to the interior, to minimize the boundary between the interior and exterior spaces.

There is a small backyard between the building and the apartment behind it, which was originally neglected. We aim to connect the square and the backyard through the elements of the “shed”.

The interior also opens up to the backyard, with ample sunlight inviting the vitality of plants indoors, allowing consumers to spend a relaxing time outdoors or under the shed. The building facing the fountain square used to be a closed facade. By extending the “shed” outward, we aim to blend the square and its scenery into the indoor space, encouraging people to gather freely under this roof from various directions.