Dark wood and deep green turn alfa romeo’s iconic design into caffè fortuna in taipeiThe Pug Father / Openverse

RLWW Studio Turns Alfa Romeo's Quadrifoglio Into Taipei Café

RLWW Studio's Caffè Fortuna in Taipei's Dazhi district translates Alfa Romeo's Quadrifoglio emblem into dark wood, deep green and geometric apertures on a street corner site.

Section: Interiors
Author: By Priya Raman
Filed: September 29, 2026
Length: 2 min read

Key takeaways

RLWW Studio (design team: Ray Liang, Gary Tsai) designed Caffè Fortuna on a street corner in Dazhi, Taipei, drawing on the client's Alfa Romeo collection.
The Alfa Romeo Quadrifoglio is deconstructed into geometric forms and beveled profiles applied across door handles, tiles, woodwork and the facade.
Six geometric apertures cut through dark wood cladding admit daylight while limiting street views; the existing corner traffic signal is integrated into the design.

Caffè Fortuna, a new corner café in Dazhi, Taipei, takes its entire design language from Alfa Romeo's Quadrifoglio — the four-leaf clover that has marked the Milanese automaker's cars since the early 20th century. RLWW Studio, led by Ray Liang and Gary Tsai, deconstructed the emblem into rational geometric forms and beveled profiles that now shape everything from door handles and patterned tiles to custom woodwork.

The name means "good fortune" in Italian. The client's private collection of Alfa Romeo vehicles — a brand founded in Milan in the early 20th century — supplied the conceptual starting point. Rather than literal branding, the designers abstracted the clover into a compositional system that governs both the interior and the street-facing facade.

The material palette pairs deep green and rich wood tones with stone and iron details, a combination the studio says references the restrained atmosphere of mid-century Milanese Modernism. The green runs through joinery and surfaces, while stone and iron add contrasting textures across the space.

The facade negotiation is the project's most pragmatic move. RLWW Studio integrated the building's existing window frames into dark wood cladding through operable panels, preserving function without disrupting the new envelope. Six geometric apertures cut through the cladding admit natural light while limiting views toward the surrounding street — a filter that lets the café maintain a sense of enclosure on a busy corner.

Inside, volumes carved from the interior walls find echoes on the facade, producing a composition of recessed voids and projecting masses that ties the two sides of the envelope together. The geometric language carries throughout: tiles reinterpret the Quadrifoglio as pattern, and beveled profiles recur in the custom woodwork.

Perhaps the most unusual gesture is the treatment of the existing corner traffic signal. The studio incorporated the signal into the café's material and spatial palette, treating a piece of municipal infrastructure as part of the design rather than an obstruction to hide.

Through geometric detailing, wood, stone, iron and carefully integrated existing elements, Caffè Fortuna converts an automotive emblem into a cohesive architectural language — and connects a Taipei street corner to its Milanese references. The project shows how a client's personal passion, in this case a car collection, can generate a full design system when a studio is willing to abstract it rather than illustrate it.

Photography is by WGH Photo.

Project information