Blue Lantern installation anchors Blue Bottle's first Bangkok cafe

By Grace Kim

A sculptural installation called the Blue Lantern hangs above the drip station at the first Blue Bottle Coffee cafe in Bangkok, designed by Japanese studio I IN. The piece is the room's centrepiece, and it carries the whole concept: a paper lantern floating in the night sky, translated into contemporary retail design.

The 178-square-metre cafe takes its cue from traditional Thai festivals, where thousands of paper lanterns are released into the sky.

"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," Terui continued.

Why a lantern, and why at the entrance?

Because this is Blue Bottle's first cafe in Bangkok, the studio wanted a "bold and dramatic" space that would also nod to local culture. The mechanism here is simple: put the most striking object where the customer can't miss it.

"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."

What does the material palette tell us?

The furniture and fixtures are made from teak wood. That's a deliberate local choice — teak is often avoided in the West due to concerns about illegal logging, but it's native to Thailand.

"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 works in layers. Blue Bottle's signature blue covers the lantern and the coffee counter. For the surrounding space, I IN chose a pale blue "to give guests a sense of brand identity and the feeling of a sky," Terui explained.

Gold came later, and from a more personal source. After walking through Bangkok, Terui added gold details to the interior.

"The idea of bringing gold into the interior actually came from my personal experience of walking around Bangkok," he 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."

A studio building a regional portfolio

I IN has been busy across Asia's retail scene. The studio recently designed the concrete Andersson Bell store in Tokyo and clad the Human Made store in Seoul in handcrafted tiles inspired by Korean celadon.

The Bangkok project shows the method behind that streak: one local reference — a festival lantern, a city's gold temples — scaled up into a signature object that does the branding work on its own.