Imperial War Museum Café

The challenge for the re-design of the Museum Cafe was to create a new benchmark for self-service restaurants. The layout of the servery has been re-modelled to provide an axial focus of hot food and display cooking before the counter turns the corner to present a cold food buffet and hot drinks station. On the far side is an ‘express counter’ serving cold take away snacks and drinks.

In plan the rooms look like part of a monastery or the kitchens of a great house. All the rooms are painted white and cream but are differentiated by the various special wall finishes and spot colours of red and aubergine. The palate of materials is utilitarian but tempered by a number of playful gestures.

The servery kitchen is dominated by the counter which has a stainless steel top, a chunky terrazzo tray slide and bronze metal fronts. The cutlery station at the end is a solid block of terrazzo. Two corridor rooms open up into a pair of cellar dining spaces. The final space is the apse room with its vivid painted curved wall, in front of which sits a semi-circular banquette covered in dark coloured suede with a spiky chandelier above.