Blue Lantern installation anchors Blue Bottle Coffee's first Bangkok cafe

A sculptural "Blue Lantern" hanging above the coffee counter dominates Blue Bottle Coffee's first cafe in Bangkok, designed by Japanese studio I IN. The installation references Thailand's traditional lantern festivals, where thousands of paper lanterns are released into the sky.

"The main idea came from Thailand's traditional lantern festival," I IN co-founder Yohei Terui told Dezeen. "We wanted to capture the feeling of a lantern floating in the sky and bring that into the space in a contemporary way."

"This became what we call the Blue Lantern, a large sculptural element extending from the ceiling above the drip station," he continued.

How did the studio make a first impression?

Because the cafe is the brand's debut in Bangkok, I IN wanted a "bold and dramatic" space that would also connect to local culture. The answer was scale.

"The lantern idea came from the local culture, and from the beginning, we wanted to make it as large and impactful as possible," Terui said. "We placed it at the location where customers first enter the cafe, so it would immediately catch their attention and become a symbol of the store."

Why teak in a 178-square-metre cafe?

The furniture and fixtures throughout the 178-square-metre cafe are made from teak wood. That's roughly the floor area of two average UK apartments, and almost all of it is dressed in timber.

The material choice carries a subtext. Teak is often avoided in the West due to concerns about illegal logging, but it is local to Thailand.

"Every country has their own approach to natural materials, depending on what is locally available and traditionally used," Terui said. "In Thailand, especially in the north, teak is a very familiar material and commonly used in the interiors and architecture."

What role does colour play?

Blue runs through the whole space. The brand's signature colour covers both the lantern and the coffee counter, while a paler blue washes the rest of the interior.

The pale tone was deliberate. Terui explained that I IN chose it to "give guests a sense of brand identity and the feeling of a sky."

Gold details came later, and from a more personal source. "The idea of bringing gold into the interior actually came from my personal experience of walking around Bangkok," Terui said. "As you walk through the city, you suddenly come across these beautiful, strong gold colours, and I found this contrast very unique."

"It was something that stayed in my memory of Bangkok, and I wanted to bring a little of that feeling into the cafe," he continued.

The project sits within a busy stretch for the studio. I IN recently designed a concrete Andersson Bell store in Tokyo and clad the Human Made store in Seoul in handcrafted tiles. The Bangkok cafe shows the studio's method at work: read a city's materials and rituals, then translate them into a retail-scale gesture like the Blue Lantern.

Photography is by Pichan Sujaritsatit.