Like Inside of a Coffee Bean: Ido & Friends Cafe by Aurora Design.

Every exceptional coffee shop I’ve ever visited has one thing in common. No, it’s not the style of coffee cups, the lighting or even the menu on offer that grabs you. It’s the aroma of coffee that carries you on a journey, making your experience something special. In Kunming, Yunnan, China, a small coffee shop celebrates exactly this. Resembling what I can only imagine the inside of a coffee bean looks like, Aurora Design’s interior fit-out for Ido & Friends Cafe offers a humble retreat into the world of coffee while remaining unpretentious and accessible.

Embracing various types of chocolate brown timber, the interiors are rich and warm — much like a good cup of coffee. Along the front facade, large panes for glazing open up the interiors to the streets of Yunnan. Inside, a low wooden bench carries a line of seating along the facade, creating the perfect spot to throw back an espresso on the go.

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Like a grandiose library from period homes, three-tiered wooden display shelves accessed via a sliding wooden ladder are used for visual merchandising. Alongside displaying coffee cups, magazines, and audio equipment, it veers away from traditional commercial advertising, and instead, carries a domestic feeling that is inviting for Ido & Friends’ visitors. “Books and magazines placed along cabinets offer a mental retreat within the coffee-scented space,” says the team Aurora Design, sharing how they like the idea that “one can discover a book alongside a cup of warm coffee and escape into another world.”

Custom round coffee tables with rippled timber finishes resemble the crema atop coffee cups, with rich dark chairs to match. Throughout the main coffee shop space, two-toned timber panels clad the walls. With a series of street trees on the footpath, light filters into this space creating a dappled effect that is reminiscent of that very specific moment when the espresso leaves the portafilter and takes a few seconds to settle into the cup; it celebrates that rippling light to dark brown gradient that exists only for a few moments.

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Beyond, two more private rooms house dedicated areas for more workshop-style events. Created as “a workspace for digital nomads,” Aurora Design share how they intended for these rooms “to inspire countless individuals to come together through friendly interactions” within a coffee shop environment. The brand, Ido & Friends, create all their venues as being “more than just a cafe with diverse coffee offerings from different origins and flavours. It’s also intended to be a meeting place where people from various fields can gather, chat and engage in conversations,” they say.

Striving to embed this open and inclusive brand philosophy into their design, Aurora Design’s interiors create a warm and inviting atmosphere that encourages all this, while celebrating the art of coffee.

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[Images courtesy of Aurora Design. Photography by Na Xin from Inspace.]