The Blend: A Viennese Coffee House Rebuilt from Brick Gables, Steel Arches and a Central Courtyard

Vienna's coffee houses have never been only about coffee. They are rooms for lingering, reading and arguing, places where the city's social life slows down long enough to be observed. The Blend takes that ritual seriously and asks what kind of building could hold it today. Its answer is a hybrid: a brick gable that nods to the city's Gothic past, an interior structured by black steel pointed arches, and a courtyard placed at the heart of the plan, borrowed from the hidden courtyards tucked behind traditional Viennese residences.

Designed by Tanishka Khandelwal of Pearl Academy Jaipur, the project was shortlisted in Brewed 2020. The site sits near Vienna's Arsenalstraße district, a mixed neighbourhood of museums, parks, educational institutions, housing, transport facilities and commercial activity. Access from several directions gives the plot strong visibility, and the brief the designer set herself follows from that: a café that functions as a public destination rather than a corner shop, combining history, modernity and everyday human connection.

A Brick Gable Holding Its Ground Beside the Glass Tower

The presentation board sets up the project's central tension in a single street view: a pitched brick volume standing next to a glass tower. Rather than competing with its taller neighbour, the café reads as a deliberate counterpoint, small in scale, warm in material and clearly gabled. The ground and first floor plans alongside it show how the programme organises around the courtyard, while the exploded axonometric separates roof, mezzanine and enclosure into legible layers, making the building's construction logic as clear as its image.

That clarity owes something to the precedents studied during the design process. Heytea Dreamer, MU'A Coffee Shop and the industrial character of Code Black Coffee all fed into the strategy, and the Code Black influence is easy to spot in the frank combination of exposed brick and steel. Climate studies shaped the massing too, with daylight access, rainfall management and natural ventilation each informing how the roof and openings were handled.

The Pointed Arch as a Layered Threshold

The split elevation, half line drawing and half rendering, is a smart presentation choice because it lets the viewer read the geometry and the material in one frame. The entrance is a pointed arch, but not a single one: the opening steps inward through several nested arches, turning the doorway into a short passage rather than a flat cut in the wall. This is the Gothic reference doing real spatial work. Vertical proportions and rhythmic façade elements carry the historic language, yet the arch is stripped of ornament, so it registers as a contemporary interpretation rather than a revival.

Light Falling Through a Glazed Roof onto Brick

Inside, the pitched roof becomes glass, and the effect is the strongest atmospheric move in the project. Sunlight washes down the exposed brick walls and lands on a checkered tile floor that recalls the old Viennese café interiors, while a mezzanine overlooks the counter below. The glazing answers the daylight concerns raised in the climate analysis and lets the brick change character over the course of the day, a quality that a fully enclosed interior would never achieve.

The lounge rendering shows the softer side of the plan. Grey sofas sit beneath three world map panels mounted on the brick, and light slants across from the skylight overhead. It is a corner meant for staying, which is exactly what a coffee house should offer. The maps quietly suggest the café as a meeting point, a gesture that fits a neighbourhood shaped by museums and educational institutions.

Steel Arches, a Mezzanine and a Courtyard at the Centre

The section view makes the structural idea explicit. Black steel pointed arches march through the interior, framing a mezzanine balcony above a ground floor lounge lined with planted wall shelves. Here the Gothic vault is translated into a modern frame: the rhythm of a nave, built with the material of an industrial loft. The vegetation on the shelves begins the project's coffee-and-nature theme indoors, softening the steel before the plan opens outward.

That opening happens in the courtyard, the project's most Viennese gesture. Slender trees rise among wooden dining tables, and a black iron stair climbs toward the upper level with a balustrade patterned in pointed arches, carrying the façade's motif right into the circulation. Placing the courtyard at the centre turns the traditional private enclave into a shared social room, with daylight, outdoor seating and planting all gathered into one space where visitors can actually sit with their coffee in the open air.

Why This Project Matters

Historic reference in student work often stops at the façade. The Blend is more disciplined than that. The pointed arch appears at the entrance, structures the interior as steel framing and returns as the stair balustrade in the courtyard, so the motif becomes a consistent spatial system rather than a decorative quotation. Paired with exposed brick, a glazed pitched roof and a central courtyard, it gives a familiar building type a clear and recognisable identity.

The project also understands what makes a coffee house worth visiting: light, places to linger and a reason to stay longer than a single cup. By grounding its decisions in site analysis, climate study and close reading of precedents, Tanishka Khandelwal's shortlisted entry shows how a small hospitality building can respect its city's history while serving the social habits of the present.

View the Full Project

About the Designers

Designer: Tanishka Khandelwal

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Project credits: The Blend by Tanishka Khandelwal Brewed 2020 (uni.xyz).