家が物理的に存在していなくても、人々は、軒下の不在の形態の下にいるときに、屋根に守られているという空間的な感覚をいまだに感じるかもしれません。コーヒーを淹れるバーカウンターと多機能なプラットフォームは、白いマッスの下に配置されています。メインエントランスから空間に入ると、人々は商品ディスプレイエリアに沿って商品を選び、注文のために列に並び、本を眺めながら過ごし、最後にはフロアの周囲に腰掛けてコーヒーを楽しむことができます。多機能なスペースがエリアの中央を占めており、その結果、円形の動線が生まれ、テーブルや椅子がその周囲に配置されています。不在の家を空間の中心に据えることで、その「痕跡（imprint）」は来訪者を、日常生活のさまざまな習慣にコミュニティとして参加させ、新たな出会いや集いの可能性を楽しませてくれます。

以下の写真はクリックで拡大します

以下、建築家によるテキストです。

The Imprint
Blue Bottle Coffee Columbia Circle Cafe

Shanghai’s Columbia Circle began as a country club for expatriates in the 20s, became an industrial park in the 50s with the addition of 11 buildings, and most recently was renovated by OMA in 2016 into a vibrant mixed-use hub, now regarded as one of Shanghai’s most successful urban regeneration projects. In the southern portion of Columbia Circle, where the emphasis is on public cultural activity spaces, Blue Bottle Coffee commissioned Neri&Hu to design a cafe that would exemplify their brand value of community culture, inviting people to connect and exchange over coffee. Neri&Hu was inspired to create an implied sense of domesticity, an imprint of “home,” to reflect on the essence of inhabitation in a condition where things surrounding are constantly shifting and changing with the pace of the city.

As Rachel Whiteread argues in her work “the connection between architectural absence and memory,” the negative form of a once-existing building can be employed as a visual reproduction of “traces” that elicit sentiments of attachment to one’s home. Neri&Hu uses a white suspended form in the negative shape of an archetypal roof, as if a mould were used to cast a house in place, including the imprint of the corrugated lines of roof drainage on its surface. Underneath it, a continuous surface of recycled clay bricks and plaster reveals a house whose finishes have been stripped away down to the subtle outlines of a building footprint and traces on the surface and neighboring facade. Even if the building is no longer visible in the physical world, the traces it leaves in our individual or collective memories serve as a source of nostalgia and remembering.

Despite the physical absence of the house, people may still feel the spatial experience of being shielded by the roof when they are under the negative shape of the eaves. The coffee-making bar and multi-functional platform are situated under the white mass. Upon entering the space through the main entrance, people can select products and wait in line to place their orders alongside the merchandise display area, while browsing books, and finally take a seat around the floor to enjoy a cup of coffee. The multi-functional floor takes up the center of the area, resulting in a circular flow, with tables and chairs distributed around its perimeter. With the centralized focal point of an absent house, the “imprint” invites patrons to partake as a community in the various rituals of daily life and delight in new potential encounters and gatherings.

■建築概要

The Imprint
Blue Bottle Coffee Columbia Circle Cafe
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Site Address: Columbia Circle, Changning District, Shanghai, China
Completion: March 2024
Client: Blue Bottle Coffee
Project Type: Interior
Program: Cafe
Gross area: 156 sqm
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Partners-in-charge: Lyndon Neri, Rossana Hu
Senior Associate-in-charge: Qiucheng Li
Design team: Xuan Zhang, Jiaxin Zhang, Greg Wu, Pinwen Zhang
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Interior design: Neri&Hu Design and Research Office