A café can be more than a place to drink coffee. It can hold a mood, a memory, or a small pause in the middle of a busy day. At Coffee London in Bashundhara R/A, the familiar atmosphere of a London street finds a new setting in Dhaka. In the hands of Architect Tasnim Turji, the concept takes shape through a careful balance of atmosphere, materiality, graphic storytelling, and practical design, while Srishty Architecture and Consultancy carries the project through construction and execution. The interior captures fragments of London’s character brick, blue, timber, graphic imagery, warm light, and architectural silhouettes and brings them together in a contemporary café environment.
Familiar references are translated into a language that feels current, allowing the space to suggest London without attempting to recreate it.
Warm brick textures sit alongside deep blue architectural panels, while timber surfaces and upholstered furniture introduce softness to the stronger architectural palette.
The combination feels distinctly urban without becoming overly thematic.
It gives the café a character that is expressive and comfortable, allowing its London references to emerge gradually rather than announcing themselves at once.
From the entrance, the café counter, seating areas, and circulation remain visually connected, creating an openness that makes the space easy to read. Seating accommodates different rhythms of use from a quick coffee alone to a longer conversation with friends while circulation remains fluid around them.
This soft geometry offers a deliberate contrast to the more structured walls, furniture, and architectural details below. Pendant fixtures and recessed lights add further layers of illumination, bringing warmth into the interior while drawing attention to selected features.
A clock tower-inspired element, illustrated cityscapes, a miniature London Eye, transportation graphics, and architectural silhouettes appear throughout the café, creating small moments of discovery. The second floor presents an unusual condition, with a lightweight tin shade roof. The absence of adequate heat treatment, together with rainwater ingress observed during construction, raises concerns about heat gain and leakage.
This condition also leads to a reconsideration of the ceiling design. The design adopts a more open mesh-type ceiling integrated with the signature curved lighting. The solution responds directly to the existing condition, allowing greater visual access to the roof structure while preserving the intended character of the interior.
Heat treatment and sandwich panels are incorporated into the ceiling envelope to improve thermal insulation and reduce the transfer of external heat into the café. By limiting heat gain, these measures help reduce cooling demand and support more efficient use of air conditioning. Furniture, fixtures, materials, and lighting ultimately come together as one cohesive language. Timber furniture and contemporary upholstered chairs temper the harder presence of brick and blue, while the controlled use of colour keeps the interior composed.
From the overall planning and interior architecture to the smallest decorative detail, each element contributes to a unified sense of place.
Coffee London does not simply borrow the image of another city. It interprets it through material, light, colour, and atmosphere. London becomes less a destination and more a feeling one that lingers over coffee in the heart of Dhaka.
