The chilled cabinets run almost the full width of this unit, so the counter ends up doing the job a shopfront usually does. Everything above it is dark. The pastries and the gelato are the brightest things in the room, and that was the point.
One wall in here is loud. The rest of the palette exists to keep out of its way.
Context and Materiality
A food unit inside a mall is read in about three seconds, from an angle, by somebody who is already walking past. That governed most of what happened here. Cabinet height was set so the top tray reads from outside the glass line rather than only when you are standing at the till. The run turns a corner instead of going flat, which gives the display a second face and stops the whole thing reading as one long wall. Above the counter the ceiling is left dark and open - black track, exposed services, no bulkhead pretending otherwise. The timber soffit over the service zone then works like a lid, pushing light down onto the food instead of letting it wash across the room.
Interior Atmosphere
Seating was kept deliberately light. Small round tables, low-backed chairs, nothing that reads as somewhere to settle in for an hour. Most of the floor belongs to the counter and to the strip in front of it, which is where a queue forms on a busy evening and where it must not spill into the mall walkway. The mural is the one place the restraint breaks. It sits on the return wall behind the service point, directly in the eyeline of anyone waiting to be served, and it is the surface people photograph. Stone, pale floor finish and brushed metal everywhere else were picked to stay quiet behind it.
Published in Journal • Jul 2026
