Design studio Linehouse combined stainless steel and meteorites to create a space-style café in central Shanghai as the first Chinese location for Australian chain Black Star Pastry.
The ground floor of the red-brick villa serves as a coffee and pastry shop for Black Star Pastry, which is famous for its strawberry-watermelon cake that the New York Times has dubbed “the most popular Australian dessert on Instagram”.
Shanghai-based Linehouse designed the space to evoke a sense of being in the space.
“The ground floor evokes the incredible feeling of being on a spaceship,” the studio said.
The studio covered the walls of the café with stainless steel shelves containing thousands of meteorites.
The shelves extend across the ceiling to form an arched shape that the studio described as “an exploration of gravity versus weightlessness.”
Continuing this theme, the countertop display features nine raised cakes. Revolving cakes are displayed in glass jars powered by magnetic levitation.
The phrase “We’re all just star dust” can be found lining the edges of communal tables, creating the effect of each letter dripping off the edge of the table by gravity.
Elsewhere on the ground floor are retail areas filled with coffee beans and clothing.
A concrete clad staircase leads guests upstairs to a gallery-style dining space called the Black Star Gallery.
It showcases artworks by four emerging international artists curated by Louis Lee, Creative Director of Black Star Pastry, to create a fantastical futuristic home.
The roof is lined with metal mesh. The floor is rough concrete terrazzo tiles, giving the space a hint of brutality and creating a museum-like mood for art.
The gallery can be used as a tea room in the afternoon and a cocktail lounge at night.
A private room called there is separated from the main dining area by a deep blue velvet curtain. It has an intimate ribbon wrapped in acid etched blue metal.
Black wood covers the floor of the room, unlike the exposed concrete of other spaces in the café. Curved stainless steel background holds wine on display.
Black Star Pastry was founded in Sydney, Australia in 2008 and is the creator of Strawberry and Watermelon Cake, the most Instagrammable cake in the world according to The New York Times. This is their first store outside Australia.
Linehouse was named Emerging Interior Designer of the Year at the 2021 Dezeen Awards. Recent projects by the studio include transforming the swimming pool in a Shanghai office building into an additional workspace and a contemporary dim sum restaurant in Hong Kong.
Photography by Jonathan Legonhovod.
Project credits:
Creative Direction and Art Organizing: Louis Lee – Black Star Pastry
Architect: Linehouse
design team: Alex Mok, Chengyu Chen, Yiling Ju, Rongli Chen, Qihang Zhou, Lia Lin
Lift cake display: studio mars
Brand graphics: Studio Ongarato / Noritake
Authorized Artists: Olivia Steele, Naoko Ito, Rowan Corkill, Debbie Lawson
Artwork production: steam
Client: black star confectioners