Tiled surfaces, scientific apparatus and plastic curtains turn this Paris cafe into a coffee laboratory.
French studio CUT Architectures tore down a suspended ceiling and stripped away wallpaper from the former shop to reveal bare walls and original mouldings.
Visitors to Café Coutume are served drinks from conical flasks and can choose pastries from a white tiled display cabinet.
Flowering plants grow inside stainless steel sinks and an industrial coffee grinder is kept behind a clear plastic curtain.
Flooring and tables in the cafe are made from oak.
Fluorescent tubes hang vertically from the ceiling behind low-energy Plumen bulbs, which won the Brit Insurance Design of the Year Award 2011 earlier this year - see the story here.
Other recently featured cafes on Dezeen include one flanked by woven steel wire and another overlapping a car park - see all our stories about restaurant and bar interiors here.
Photography is by David Foessel.
Here is some more text from the architects:
Coutume is a new coffee roastery in Paris offering a cut edge selection of pure origin roasted coffees.
CUT architectures designed the first Coutume café in the centre of Paris combining a roastery and a café offering the best coffees in Paris and a neat selection of fresh and organic food and delicacies.
In the spirit of speciality coffee, the experts at Coutume give the opportunity to rediscover the coffee culture with high end tools and machines.
The blend of tradition, alchemy and technique inspired CUT architectures design.
Tearing down the walls and ceilings brought back a typical Parisian interior with high ceilings, mouldings, columns and an old shop door. A new oak flooring adds up to the Parisian atmosphere.
CUT architectures set in this decor a laboratory of coffee using square white tiles, grid lighting, stainless steel, industrial plastic curtains, laboratory glassware.
The plain oak tables were designed for Coutume as the fusion of this Parisian interior and the laboratory.
Coutume café's design has been selected along wih Rem Koolhaas le Dauphin and Patrick Bouchain's la Grenouillère by the restaurant critics of lefooding.com
