Fuji Flower Cafe by HECING Interior Design Co., Ltd

In this interview, the first of those from our 2018 student winners, we asked Yu-Han Wang about Fuji Flower Coffee.

HECING Interior Design Co. Ltd. was established at Taipei City, Taiwan. The purpose of HECING Interior Design Co. Ltd. is to create spaces with new styles, new definitions and new habits — all within a limited budget. The company specializes in old house and office innovations and the creation of fantastic living and working spaces.

This store is a composite space that provides coffees and floral designs. Aside from being a store, it is also a base for consideration of making the urban green. The entrance of the store is designed to be a short tunnel-like pathway, decorated with flowers. In order to create dynamic appearances and feelings during walking through the tunnel, the choices of flowers will be varied, depending on the different seasons. Overall, the purpose of these design ideas is to make people feel that they are stepping into a greenhouse garden amongst the concrete jungle.

The design process revolved around the idea of the greenhouse: Flowers grow strong in a greenhouse, so we wanted to bring the ideas of arched flower shelves, water supply and sewerage facilities into the store design. A variety of flowers grow on shelves built on the surface of the wall, which lets people feel like they are living in a world of flowers.

The greatest challenge our design faced was in considering a plant-growing environment. We set up an automatic spraying system, sewerage system, along with temperature/humidity sensors on the wall surfaces and ceiling. Regarding the steel flowerpots we used, we also had to consider drainage — and how to avoid soil flowing into the drain pipe. This meant the flower containers needed to be redesigned.

This is a space that combines coffees and floral designs. I wish to bring such floral design into our daily life — rather than just on special holidays. If we imagine that we need a cup of latte every day, why wouldn’t we need a flower every day, in order to encourage our mind? Here, we are providing a different lifestyle: slowness. As well as selling beverages and flowers, floral lectures are also provided.

AMP has always been an important architectural award, and it has helped the work.

Many thanks to Yu-Han Wang for answering our questions and sharing details of this beautiful project.