The Cafe Grind: A Viennese Café Split by a River Line and Roofed in Alpine Peaks

Q: Who wrote "The Cafe Grind: A Viennese Café Split by a River Line and Roofed in Alpine Peaks"?

This article was written by UNI Editorial and published on uni.xyz, a platform for design professionals and creative thinkers.

Q: What is "The Cafe Grind: A Viennese Café Split by a River Line and Roofed in Alpine Peaks" about?

This article covers topics related to Landscape Design, Concept Architecture. An Honorable Mention at Brewed 2020, this café splits into two volumes at different levels, joined by a water path that traces the Danube.

Most café proposals begin with the counter and work outward. BREWED: The Cafe Grind begins with a map of Vienna. It takes two features of the city's geography, the Alpine ranges on its horizon and the Danube running through its fabric, and builds them directly into the architecture. The roofline borrows the profile of mountain peaks, and a linear water pathway between the main volumes stands in for the river. The result is a café that tries to explain where it is through its own shape.

Designed by Armin Farshad, Hanna Hassani and Samin Ghasemzadeh, the project received an Honorable Mention in Brewed 2020. The team developed it during the Covid-19 pandemic, and that timing matters. The brief asked for a coffee house, a building type defined by people gathering closely. The designers answered at a moment when closeness had become a public health question, and their scheme treats separation, airflow and environmental comfort as core design problems.

Mountain Peaks Drawn as a Roofline

Night view of the angular dark-framed cafe facade with glowing strip lights and a parked white wagon in front

At night the café reduces to its outline: dark angular frames traced by strip lights. In this view the Alpine reference is easiest to read. The designers avoid applying the mountains as ornament. Instead, the pitched planes are the structure of the building, so the silhouette and the enclosure are the same thing. The roof is the concept, so the image of the building is legible from the street before anyone steps inside.

A Sloped Approach Toward a Timber Gable

Annotated rendering of the cafe with timber-clad gable end, glazed walls and silhouetted figures walking the sloped forecourt under a cloudy sky

Entrance gable with timber cladding and a glazed front, shallow steps and a planter beside it, under an overcast sky

In daylight the frames give way to material. A timber-clad gable end sits above full glazing, and the forecourt slopes gently toward the entrance, where shallow steps and a planter mark the threshold. The annotated rendering shows figures walking up that incline, and it is the first hint that movement through the project is meant to read as a sequence rather than a simple entry.

That sequence is where the Danube metaphor carries its weight. The water pathway running between the primary volumes gives circulation a spine, so moving through the café follows the course of a river. It is an ambitious idea for a small building. It works because the line is also practical: it organises routes, divides the programme and holds the composition together on a long site.

Two Volumes, Two Elevations, One Social Room

Interior of the cafe with a concrete service counter, bottle-and-moss wall and timber ceiling slats lit by linear fixtures in daylight

The pandemic shaped the plan most directly in the decision to split the café into two volumes placed at different elevations. The designers could have treated distancing as a list of restrictions. Instead they made it part of the section. Visitors occupy separate zones, but visual connections and open circulation keep those zones in contact, so the café stays one social environment even when its users are apart.

The interior view shows the tone of these spaces: a concrete service counter, a wall of bottles and moss, and timber ceiling slats lit by linear fixtures. The palette is restrained and tactile, and the planted wall carries the project's environmental agenda into the room where coffee is actually served.

Stacking the Café into Layers of Use

Upper floor seating area with sloped timber ceiling, driftwood sculptures on black plinths, a fern and a glass balustrade

Concrete feature wall with small glowing lights and red accents beside round tables and green-cushioned plywood chairs near a glazed garden wall

The programme spreads across three levels, each with its own relationship to the visitor. Below ground, a community zone becomes an alternative social space for reading, relaxing, film screenings and informal gatherings, enclosed enough to feel intimate while staying visually linked to the rest of the building. The ground level works as arrival and circulation hub. Above, an upper seating area sits under the sloped timber ceiling, with driftwood sculptures on black plinths and a glass balustrade that keeps sightlines open to the floors below.

The concrete feature wall, studded with small lights and red accents, sits beside round tables, green-cushioned plywood chairs and a glazed wall facing the garden. Here the layering pays off. A coffee house becomes several rooms with different moods, which suits a crowd that wants either conversation or retreat, and suits a building designed to spread people across space without isolating them.

A Linear Plan Read Against Climate

Aerial rendering of a long, narrow glazed building with angled roof planes beside a parking lot, parked cars and snow-covered trees

The aerial rendering shows how much the site determined the form. The elongated plot called for a linear organisation, and the team used that length to capture daylight, views and natural airflow along the building's edge. Seen from above, the angled roof planes break the long glazed volume into readable segments set against snow-covered trees and the parking lot.

Behind this form sits a layer of environmental analysis. Psychrometric studies and wind wheel analysis informed the passive strategies, so comfort depends on orientation and form rather than mechanical systems alone. This is the quieter half of the project's sustainability argument, and arguably the more convincing half: the geography metaphor gives the building its identity, while the climate data makes the building perform.

Why This Project Matters

The Cafe Grind shows how a typology built on closeness can respond to a crisis without abandoning its social purpose. By turning distancing into a sectional strategy of separate volumes, shifted levels and maintained sightlines, the designers treat a temporary constraint as a source of spatial richness. That thinking outlasts the pandemic. Any public interior that needs to hold different groups, moods and densities at once can learn from it.

The project also makes a case for metaphor that has real consequences. The Alps and the Danube could easily have become decorative gestures. Here they set the roof structure and the circulation spine, and the team grounds both in passive environmental analysis. For a student-led competition entry, that combination of place, programme and performance is what makes the scheme worth studying.