rippling metal roof drapes over interlocking stone volumes of vietnamese cafe

"On a prominent corner lot along one of the busiest streets of Bà Rịa Ward, Ho Chi Minh City, KQI Architect completes The 1999's Coffee, a 210-square-meter café led by architect Kiến Quân. The project is conceived as an architectural gesture that mediates between the speed of the city and the slower rhythms of everyday pause. Taking advantage of its corner condition, the design opens toward multiple directions, allowing the café to receive natural light throughout the day."

"A long, westward-extending sloped roof acts as a continuous sun-shading device, shaping the silhouette of the building while protecting interior spaces from harsh afternoon exposure. Beneath this roof, interlocking asymmetrical volumes establish a dynamic composition, avoiding a single frontal orientation and instead encouraging movement around and through the structure. The roofline is clad in small metal sheets of varied colors, shapes, and sizes, layered like fish scales to create a textured surface that shifts subtly with changing light conditions."

"The Vietnamese team at KQI Architect combines stone, baked brick, woven reed panels, natural wood, and rammed-earth textures, choosing finishes that preserve their raw and tactile qualities and introduce a sense of familiarity and craft. The palette emphasizes sensory experience, roughness, warmth, and weight, reinforcing the café's role as a place of physical and perceptual slowing down. This material language continues inside 1999's Coffee with a restrained palette of neutral tones, soft yellows, and natural wood finishes."

KQI Architect completed The 1999's Coffee, a 210-square-meter café on a corner lot in Bà Rịa Ward, Ho Chi Minh City. The design mediates between urban speed and slower rhythms by opening toward multiple directions and admitting natural light throughout the day. A long, westward sloped roof provides continuous sun shading and shapes the building silhouette while protecting interiors from harsh afternoon sun. Interlocking asymmetrical volumes create a dynamic composition that encourages movement around the building. A layered metal roof cladding, stone, baked brick, reed panels, natural wood, and rammed-earth textures emphasize tactile warmth. Interiors use neutral tones, soft yellows, and large windows to extend and calm the compact space.

Read at designboom | architecture & design magazine