2011
Charlottesville, Virginia
Architecture
Interiors
Furnishings
Lighting Design
Branding Coordination
Public/Restaurant
Alexander Nicholson
John Owen & Sarah Owen
Jack Looney
Mudhouse Coffee is Charlottesville's homegrown, nationally recognized, coffee salon and roaster. John Lawrence, Lynelle Lawrence and their staff are masters of their craft who frequently receive national and international awards and prizes for their coffees, service and their socially and environmentally conscious business practices. The flagship coffee house is located in a 1920s brick party- wall building on Charlottesville's Downtown Mall.
The Mudhouse Downtown café is one of the town's central gathering spaces, a place where all feel at home. The concept grew in two directions: spatial and material. The front-of-house is imagined as an extension of the Downtown Mall, a public walking street. The material palette was informed by an initial demolition and exploration phase.
Revealed artifacts guided design and client team in decision-making. Using found, natural and locally sourced materials, the concept pairs an attitude of historical curation and the addition of natural materials that tie into the old rather than contrast with it.
Demolition exposed old layers of plaster behind a drywall partition. The team saw this as a gift of circumstance. Inspired by a wall in the movie "The King's Speech," John Owen & Sarah Owen were engaged to curate the plaster wall. The pair stabilized flaking parts, adjusted colors and cleaned the wall to shape it into a collage.
Exposing the ceiling structure allows lighting to be tucked between joists making art, people and materials the main characters. Warm color temperature is used to highlight the richness of the plaster collage wall, walnut cabinetry and oiled heart pine floors.
Formwork’s third project for Charlottesville’s iconic coffeehouse deepens a community-oriented branding strategy
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