A reflection on the French café through the prism of contrast and history.
This project is our interpretation of the classic French café, filtered through our aesthetic. We gathered familiar, recognisable design elements and mixed them with our signature style. It’s all about contrast — the foundation of our work.
Make everything smooth that you can touch, and rough everything that you can’t. Located in an early 20th-century building that was formerly a Jewish shop, the space provided the perfect architectural and emotional backdrop for this concept. L’OR cafe has two levels, different in style and function.
The ground floor fits a light bistro zone. Here, you can imagine an artist sitting quietly with a cigarette and a cup of coffee, just like in the cafés of early 20th-century Paris. Instead of one large bar, we designed three small stone bars. The tables are small and round, just like in a classy bistro.
The second floor is more restaurant-like, intended for leisurely dinners, fine wine, and intimate conversations. Heavy curtains and soft textures create a sense of intimacy and drama. Linoleum tabletops and the preserved mural fragments from the original building create a tactile, yet slightly raw, atmosphere.
The original checkerboard tiles, discovered in the staircase nearby, inspired our reinterpretation of the classic black-and-white bistro pattern, recreated using alternative materials for a more contemporary and elegant look. Brass accents in metal and signs. We intentionally preserved the raw walls — their imperfections add honesty and weight, reminding visitors of the building’s history.
The use of unconventional materials in refined forms (like linoleum on tabletops or rugged textures next to velvet upholstery) speaks to our desire to blur boundaries between old and new, high and low, smooth and rough.
We focused on reuse — preserving around 50% of existing walls and revealing original surfaces, reusing almost all of the floor structure with only about 20% added, and integrating vintage furniture, including around 80% vintage chairs.
