project
ozone coffee roasters
LOCATION
East London, Auckland
CLIENT
James + Lizzie Gurr
COMPLETED
2011–2019
Supporting a successful New Zealand roastery to feel at home in London, whilst remaining true to its founding ethos and mission. Following the success of the London Flagship store we were asked to continue to define the brand with Ozone's next venues.
LEONARD ST, 2011
Their first venue outside of New Zealand was located off Old Street roundabout in a beautiful brick warehouse, with a strong façade rhythm of tall, multi-pane warehouse windows. We peeled back the layers of plasterboard, paint, and clean finishes to reveal the bones of the building: stunning brickwork, high concrete ceilings, Victorian steel columns, and secret vaults.
Ozone are primarily roasters, so the large-scale roasting production became the hero of the space. The floor opens as you walk in to give guests the immediate impact of the beating heart of the business. The experience is immediately visceral as you see, hear, and smell the whirring rotors of the beans being swirled below. Everything about Ozone’s philosophy is about transparency, sourcing, and fairly working with world-class producers who are paving the way for more sustainable and ethical coffee production and minimising waste. The design philosophy reflects this: no unnecessary layers, an open social plan, views into and around the production of the coffee.
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Wallpaper Magazine – Read Here
AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND, 2018
After the success of London, we were invited back to New Zealand to design their Auckland roastery and café, working alongside their NZ construction team. The huge, newly built industrial site perfectly suited a cleaner, functional aesthetic. The materials are the raw materials one would expect to find on the factory floor, but with careful detailing so that the guest feels both exposed to the exciting operations and comforted by the warm ply wrap.
A stripped-back, simple palette of birch ply, concrete, and steel work together to balance warmth with industrial. When layered together, the materials and the design create a mood that is both intimate and open. One is invited to linger in the booths and experience the energy of a genuine Ozone production site. Because the site is voluminous, the gestures are huge. We commissioned enormous bespoke steel trough lights and towering walls of ply alongside monolithic panels of stone and concrete. This space is built to last a lifetime and to celebrate the production facility of a company that cares about doing business better.
EMMA STREET, LONDON, 2019
Back to London for the third site for our now good friends, James and Lizzie. This time, we were tasked with creating a roastery, café, training site, and head office. The contemporary utilitarian design once more intentionally celebrates the Ozone Roastery production floor and training facilities. The public spaces wrap around the production spaces, allowing staff to flow between the two and customers to have full visibility of the product they are consuming.
The design is distilled to its bare bones: fresh white brick, concrete floors, stainless steel ribbon bars, warm birch-faced plywood booths with a pop of sea green. The long, 5mm thick stainless-steel bar appears as one continuous sheet, with all functions worked into one monolithic gesture. The booths fold in and out of each other and the wall like a plywood ribbon. We used a single forest green as a highlight colour to punctuate the fresh white palette, and a deep sea green to match chairs and bar stools, brilliantly formed from old Norwegian fishing nets.
Ozone Emma Street bridges the two previous designs – a crisp, sharp, contemporary version of Leonard Street with nods to the lightness and palette of the Auckland site. The result is three unique spaces that all feel a part of the same brand family, story, and mission.
Lou and the Box 9 team supported Ozone with the design for two of our London locations and one in Auckland—each one combining hospitality space, training facility, coffee roastery, and office space.
Box 9’s superpower is their ability to interpret not just the practical requirements of a space, but the vision and feeling we want people to experience when they walk through the door. Working with Lou was always collaborative, thoughtful, and full of energy—she truly helped bring our vision to life.