Atlas Coffeehouse is Grounded in Place

Hui Designs’ refresh of Atlas Coffeehouse charts a new course with peppy colours, an improved layout and a new relationship to the street

The most beloved cafes have a strong, memorable character, and Atlas Coffeehouse is one such establishment. Opened by one of Singapore’s first third wave coffee entrepreneurs, it was already a popular spot for good coffee in the residential neighbourhood of Bukit Timah, but a recent refresh by Hui Designs further knits it into its context.

As a regular patron, designer Lim Siew Hui (also behind Singapore’s Merci Marcel, Chico Loco and OverEasy) already knew the cafe's regular crowd. ‘I noticed the various profiles and motivations of the customers, who range from busy executives and homemakers to students and cyclists – all streaming into the cafe at different hours. I wanted to design a space that would appeal to all of them,’ Lim explains.

This literally translates to an assortment of seating types, one of which is a 36-seater outdoor deck. This gesture increases seating capacity, embraces Singapore’s breezy weather and maximises the cafe’s street-facing location in a low-rise corner block. A wonderful piece of urban furniture, it’s a natural fit for the cafe's underutilised sidewalk and has become a favourite of cyclists on pit stops. A tiered design mitigates uneven floors splintered by the unruly roots of nearby trees, and awnings shelter from rain, heat and glare.

Full-height glazing connects this outdoor space with the interiors, which Lim made inviting with natural materials and saturated tones that replace tired, industrial-themed decor and now visually define the cafe’s different parts. For instance, a four-metre-tall, forest-green timber wall backs the navy-blue counter (the use of this colour was the client’s only specification, since it’s become the cafe’s trademark colour); an exposed, white-washed brick wall is a textural foil for a row of banquette seats; and at the rear, high tables and bar stools offer peeks into the kitchen through serving windows framed by a plywood wall.

Lim also improved the spatial flow for a more pleasant ordering process. The counter, formerly at the rear, was brought forward to the entrance, while a parapet rises from the terrazzo floor to subtly organise queues along and away from the counter to avoid congestion. An awkward, triangulated corner transformed into a curved ivory banquette seat further proves Lim’s spatial dexterity.

In Atlas, Lim has pulled together various elements, systems, textures and functions into a purposeful, coherent whole. While the cafe’s name was derived from one of the owners’ obsession with space exploration, the new Atlas Coffeehouse offers space exploration of another kind — one that is earthy, lively and rooted in place.

Text / Luo Jingmei
Images / Tawan Conchonnet