KaDeWe Café Berlin / Ester Bruzkus Architekten

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The design offsets cool stainless steel, mirrored metals, and glossy orange and lavender powder coats with two types of warm and natural terra cotta tiles. Both the marbled tiles on the walls and the fluted tiles on the counter are from the tile manufacturer Fornace Brioni. Unlike the crisp machine-aesthetic of the metals that are used, the terra cotta tiles are made by expert hand-crafting techniques that produce a unique marbled surface by mixing different clays. “We like to mix and match in unexpected combinations,” explains Ester Bruzkus.Text description provided by the architects.The café, located on the top floor ofBerlin’s KaDeWe, is a play of materials, textures, colors, and forms. The project is intended as a delicious trifle that combines contrasts of smooth and textured, refined and raw, natural and synthetic, glossy and matte, muted and bright, traditional and new.The result attempts to resolve some themes of contemporary design to bring together opposites - natural and artificial, colorful and muted, hand-crafted and machined – in order to make a fun place to get a cup of coffee when you are shopping at the KaDeWe.