Barde vanVoltt Splits a 100 m² Amsterdam Coffee Roastery into a Bright Shop and a Hidden Tasting Room

Specialty coffee has spent a decade dressing its shops in the same pale minimalism, as if the product could only be trusted against white tile and birch ply. DAK Coffee Roasters in Amsterdam takes a different route. The interior, designed by Barde vanVoltt, the practice of Bart Jan van Seggelen, Valerie Boerma and Maud Botman, packs a coffee bar, retail shop, tasting room and workplace into roughly 100 m². It treats the visit as a sequence rather than a single counter transaction.

The stated concept, "stepping into a coffee cup", sounds like branding, and partly it is. What makes the project worth your attention is how literally the plan follows through. A bright, public front room hands you off through a metal-lined passage to a dark, wood-panelled tasting room at the back. The materials grow warmer and the light lower as you move deeper, the way flavour gets more concentrated toward the bottom of a cup. Bean to cup becomes front to back.

A Counter Built Like a Hearth

The front of house is anchored by a brick-tiled service counter, and that one material choice sets the tone. Brick reads as kiln, oven and roastery all at once, which is a smarter reference for a coffee roaster than the usual marble slab. Next to it, a ribbed steel table and a hammered metal sink column bring in a second, industrial register. The steel roaster sits in plain view instead of being hidden in a back room.

The barista station is placed so you can watch the extraction happen on a three-group Slayer, two Decent machines and a FloSmart milk dispenser. This is equipment worth showing off. The architects give it a theatre without turning the room into a laboratory.

Daylight, Timber and the Pause Before Buying

Tall windows pull daylight deep onto the polished concrete floor. A long pale timber bench runs alongside the counter, so the shop never feels like a pure retail corridor. Mirrored stools pick up the sun and scatter it back into the room, and slim brass wall lights take over once the afternoon fades.

The slatted display table, stacked with books and candles, quietly tells you that lingering is allowed. In a footprint this tight, giving over a full wall to seating is a commercial decision as much as a spatial one. We think it is the right call: people who sit tend to ask questions, and people who ask questions buy beans.

Hammered Steel as the Retail Language

Retail walls are where small coffee shops usually lose the plot, filling up with generic shelving and merchandise clutter. Here, folded metal shelves are cut into hammered steel panels, and boxed coffee, glassware, candles and a single hanging T-shirt are displayed with gallery restraint. The curved hammered panels catch diffuse window light and break it into a soft shimmer, so the wall works as a light fixture as well as storage.

The hand-worked texture matters. Flat stainless steel would have felt clinical next to the brick. Hammered, the metal feels crafted, which is exactly the claim a roaster wants its packaging wall to make.

The Threshold Is the Project

Between the shop and the tasting room sits the design's sharpest move: a metal-lined passage the team describes as a chrome tunnel, framed in brushed, bent metal and cut through a dark wood wall. From the tasting side, it frames the tiled counter and windows of the room you just left, like a viewfinder pointed back at daylight. A steel-lined recess set into the plaster and a brass tap above a hammered basin carry the same metal vocabulary to the edges of the plan.

A few metres of reflective lining do more work here than any amount of signage. The passage compresses you briefly, changes the acoustics and resets your eyes before the darker room opens up. It turns a small floor plate into two distinct experiences without a single full-height partition doing the heavy lifting.

A Secret Room for Slow Coffee

The tasting room, used for cuppings and workshops, inverts everything at the front. Deep brown timber panelling wraps the walls, a round ash table sits under low pendants, and daylight is reduced to a narrow window slit. The round table is a good decision for a space built around shared tasting: nobody sits at the head, and everyone can reach the carafes.

The black-framed stools come from Danish architect Eva Harlou, who developed them with the Danish Technological Institute and the University of Copenhagen. This links the room to the project's broader interest in material research, including the recycled, biobased finishes made from coffee waste that were developed with material specialist Marijke Jans. A roaster that turns its own byproduct into its surfaces is making an argument, not just decorating a room.

Objects That Do the Explaining

Close up, the design works through small still lifes: a black kettle and glass server on an oak counter, a beam of sun crossing walnut panelling, a cup set on a charred wood tray over slatted steel. These are the moments the brand will photograph endlessly, but they also show how carefully the palette was tuned. Charred timber, brick and dark wood all sit in the brown range of roasted beans, while the glass and steel stay cool and clear, like the brew itself.

Plans and Drawings

The floor plan confirms what the photographs suggest. The unit is long and narrow, with the shop and roastery stretched along the street-facing length and the seating room tucked at the far end. The shop window, lettered in white and backed by shelved boxes, works as the first frame in the sequence, and the plan reads as a single line from pavement to tasting table.

Why This Project Matters

DAK shows that a 100 m² fit-out can carry a real spatial idea if the designers commit to sequence over spectacle. Barde vanVoltt did not try to make every corner impressive. They made the front generous and legible, the back intimate and dim, and spent their boldest gesture on the threshold between the two. That hierarchy is what lets a casual espresso visit and a structured cupping session share the same small address without getting in each other's way.

It also points to where hospitality interiors are heading. The coffee-waste materials, the research-led stools and the willingness to use brick and hammered steel instead of off-the-shelf minimalism all suggest a sector that wants its rooms to explain the product, not just frame it. For you as a designer, the takeaway is practical: identify the one transition that defines the experience, and give it your budget.

DAK Coffee Roasters by Barde vanVoltt (Bart Jan van Seggelen, Valerie Boerma, Maud Botman), Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Area: 100 m². Completed: 2024. Photography: Sarah Wijzenbeek.

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