Blue Lantern installation anchors Blue Bottle Coffee's first Bangkok cafe

Japanese studio I IN has completed the first Blue Bottle Coffee cafe in Bangkok, anchoring the 178-square-metre interior with a sculptural "Blue Lantern" suspended above the coffee counter.

The Tokyo-based practice drew on Thailand's traditional lantern festivals, where thousands of paper lanterns are released into the sky, as the design's central concept.

"The main idea came from Thailand's traditional lantern festival," I IN co-founder Yohei Terui told Dezeen. "We wanted to capture the feeling of a lantern floating in the sky and bring that into the space in a contemporary way."

"This became what we call the Blue Lantern, a large sculptural element extending from the ceiling above the drip station," he continued.

Why a lantern, and why at the entrance?

As the brand's first location in Bangkok, the cafe demanded a "bold and dramatic" space that would also acknowledge local culture, the studio said.

"The lantern idea came from the local culture, and from the beginning, we wanted to make it as large and impactful as possible," Terui said. "We placed it at the location where customers first enter the cafe, so it would immediately catch their attention and become a symbol of the store."

In short: the installation functions as the store's visual signature from the first step inside.

What materials and colours define the space?

I IN built the furniture and fixtures from teak. The timber is often avoided in the West over concerns about illegal logging, but it is native to Thailand and familiar in local building tradition.

"Every country has their own approach to natural materials, depending on what is locally available and traditionally used," Terui said. "In Thailand, especially in the north, teak is a very familiar material and commonly used in the interiors and architecture."

The colour scheme runs blue throughout. The brand's signature blue covers the lantern and coffee counter; a pale blue fills the rest of the space.

The pale tone was chosen to "give guests a sense of brand identity and the feeling of a sky," Terui explained.

Gold details complete the palette. The decision followed Terui's own walk through the Thai capital.

"The idea of bringing gold into the interior actually came from my personal experience of walking around Bangkok," Terui said. "As you walk through the city, you suddenly come across these beautiful, strong gold colours, and I found this contrast very unique."

"It was something that stayed in my memory of Bangkok, and I wanted to bring a little of that feeling into the cafe," he continued.

Where else is I IN working?

The Bangkok cafe extends a busy regional run for the studio. I IN recently designed the concrete Andersson Bell store in Tokyo and clad the Human Made store in Seoul in handcrafted tiles.

The Bangkok photography is by Pichan Sujaritsatit.

The project signals how global hospitality brands entering Southeast Asian markets increasingly pair signature identity with locally sourced materials and cultural references rather than importing a standard template.