Catalyst, London

Catalyst roasters is a speciality coffee shop. Opened in 48 Grey’s Inn road in central London.
It offers its own coffee blend roasted on its basement, together with a Global – Mediterranean based cuisine for breakfast, branch, lunch and dinner, and a selection of quality draft beer. The team of Catalyst, food and coffee lovers, seek the very best. The challenge was to design an environment to host a relaxing and pleasant coffee experience, and together to partly reveal its role as a “lab” which is testing and self producing the coffee and also cooking the food served.

The concept of the Catalyst design was the materiality itself, in which we aimed to balance the use of natural materials into the space, in order to create a warm – but not colorless space, based on texture simplicity, a humble glossiness and brightness into the grey London mood, a balance between roughness and sensitivity as a good cup of coffee has.
On the shop’s ground level, the bar, the sitting area and the display selling points are located, while the basement level becomes an always busy open lab, accessible and open to the public, with a build in coffee roaster and an open kitchen. A hole on the floor, topped with a clear glass floor, is the connection point between the 2 levels, where someone can sneak a view of the production procedure, while having a coffee.