DOPE Roasting Co. is an espresso bar, coffee roasting shop and bakery, housed in a 19th century neoclassical building. The property is located at the corner of Vissis and Athinas street in the center of Athens. The space consists of two levels; the ground floor which has a direct access to Vissis street and a mezzanine floor.
The traces of wear found on the interior façade of the shop, reflect the building’s long course throughout the decades and became an important starting point for setting the design agenda. The design brief focused on maintaining such details that reveal the building’s past and character. The characteristics of the specific central district, the atmosphere, the aesthetic standards the clients set, understanding modern needs and contemporary habits of city dwellers, composed the project’s design axes that determined the study of a space with a multifaceted character; being in accordance with the present and having a linear connection with the building’s past.
The project was based on the harmonic but distinct coexistence of four different functions (production and supply of coffee, coffee roasting, bakery, and customer seating). Due to the shop’s working hours, the place welcomes visitors mainly during the day. Six large scale skylights were installed to provide natural daylight into the shop, which in combination with the green wall situated across the entry create the feeling of a semi-outdoor space on the ground floor. Additionally, two large windows on different facades, open vertically and are instrumental in bringing the urban life into the shop, filtered by the atmosphere of DOPE.
Selected patterns or geometries, rough surfaces of preserved walls, timeless materials such as marble, wood, metal, cement, enameled tiles, and reinforced glass created a hybrid result faithful to the original design agenda. The color palette that was used followed the company’s corporate identity combining it with shades of white, black and the natural color of many implemented materials.
