Coffee Machine Bakery: Copper Ribbons and a White-to-Red Sequence in a Narrow Flagship Café

A long, narrow room is usually something a café puts up with. Coffee Machine Bakery uses its depth instead. The plan runs far back into the building, and the design turns that length into a journey: a bright, quick front gives way to a darker, slower interior. Copper carries the eye from one end to the other, and a change in colour and light tells you when you have arrived somewhere new.

Designed by Сергей Питерский and entered in Interiors '20, where it received a People's Choice Award, the project is the brand's first major street retail space. It is a flagship in the historic centre of the city, and it marks the brand's move away from conventional formats toward a more spatially expressive interior. The brief came with real constraints. The footprint is tight, and the entrance has to share space with a staircase that serves institutions on the upper floors.

An Entrance That Has to Serve Two Masters

The first views show the project's toughest problem. The entry zone is not only the café's threshold. It is also a route for people heading upstairs, and the concrete staircase sits right beside the terrazzo-clad counter. Питерский keeps a clear central axis for movement and pushes seating and service to the edges. Timber standing tables are fixed to the walls, and high stools line the glazing. Customers who stop and people who pass through can share the room without crossing paths.

Overhead, the copper ribbon fixtures do two jobs. In a volume this narrow, their reflective surfaces bounce light around and stop the room from feeling squeezed. Their flowing forms also break up the straight run of the ceiling and pull the eye deeper into the plan. Seen from the back toward the glazed entrance, the front zone reads as it should for a quick-service area: open to the street, full of daylight, and built for short stays and high turnover.

Copper-Edged Steps and the First Hint of Red

The move from front to back is marked in the floor and walls, not by doors. Steps edged in copper rise to a raised seating area. The metal used on the ceiling now traces the change in level, so the material language stays consistent even as the mood shifts. Beside the steps, a white tiled booth sits against a red corrugated panel. It is the first clear sign that the white backdrop of the front room is about to give way.

The red fluted wall makes the change explicit. Vertical light strips are set into the panel, and black pendants hang above high tables and grey stools. Here the lighting is part of the architecture rather than an add-on. The strips emphasise the vertical rhythm of the fluting, and the pendants pick out each table. The source text describes the black furniture as adding structural sharpness, and that holds true. Against the red, the slim dark frames read as crisp lines, not clutter.

A Neon Pocket Tucked Beneath the Stair

This is where the interior becomes more theatrical. A white tiled booth with round red cushions and a red-topped table faces a pink neon sign on the back wall. The tile keeps the corner graphic and clean, while the neon brings in a warmer, more nocturnal glow. It is a small space, but it feels complete. This is the kind of corner people choose on purpose.

The alcove under the glass-balustrade staircase is the project's sharpest response to its constraints. The space below a stair is usually wasted. Here it becomes a lit niche, tinted pink by the neon and reflected in faceted mirrored steel. The mirrored surface does in miniature what the copper does across the whole café. It multiplies light and blurs the edges of a tight volume, so the alcove feels larger than its dimensions.

The Slow End of the Room

Deep in the plan, the bakery and dining zone settles into longer stays. Round wooden tables and tan leather chairs replace the high stools, and a red-topped counter faces a glazed kitchen window. Pendant spotlights cast pools of light rather than an even wash. The light is more directional, the enclosure is stronger, and the room is designed for people who plan to stay a while. The kitchen window keeps the bakery's work on view, a fitting move for a brand that wants its flagship to be an experience as well as a counter.

Even the washroom follows the same palette. A wall-hung stainless steel toilet, a terracotta-coloured basin, dark painted brick and a stained wood vanity echo the café's mix of metal, warm earth tones and dark finishes. It is a modest space, but it shows a designer who thought about the whole sequence, not just the parts that appear in photographs.

Why This Project Matters

Coffee Machine Bakery shows that a linear plan does not have to feel like a corridor. By setting a clear circulation spine and then changing material, colour and light as the room deepens, Питерский creates several distinct experiences in one continuous volume. White walls, terrazzo and copper set up the front. Red, neon and darker finishes take over at the back. Each zone has its own pace, and the transitions are handled through steps, panels and lighting rather than walls.

The project also offers a useful lesson in how to translate a brand into space. Copper is not applied as a logo colour. It reflects light, guides the eye and marks changes in level. The leftover space under the stair becomes one of the best seats in the house. For a first street retail flagship on a tight historic site, that combination of discipline and atmosphere explains why the entry earned its People's Choice recognition.

View the Full Project

About the Designers

Designer: Сергей Питерский

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Project credits: Coffee Machine Bakery by Сергей Питерский Interiors '20 (uni.xyz).