ONA Coffee Melbourne by Breathe

ArchiPro Project Summary - Ona Coffee Melbourne: A sustainable café in a converted Brunswick warehouse, featuring a welcoming atmosphere, reclaimed materials, and a focus on community engagement and coffee education.

Title:: ONA Coffee Melbourne
Architect:: Breathe
Category:: Commercial/; Hospitality

One of Australia’s most highly regarded specialty roasters, Canberra-based Ona Coffee, makes its Melbourne debut in an understated and inviting Brunswick warehouse conversion. Reflective of Ona’s values of sustainability and approachability, this café is about creating an inviting, humble and personal space to enjoy, appreciate and learn about coffee. It is a space that builds on Melbourne coffee culture and follows a light-touch approach with simple, raw and recycled materials used to create a comfortable and in-situ place.

Nestled in Ovens Street brimming with craftspeople, trades and artists, Ona Coffee is a 450 square metre site sitting between Anstey and Brunswick stations and tucked in behind Sydney Road. From Ovens Street, the tiered timber decking, punctuated with plants, draws people up and into the café. The decking prioritises people over cars with the vehicle access diverted to the side of the building. Within the space there is a hierarchy of moments: custom moveable communal tables; bar seating; banquette seating; table and chair configurations; mobile waiter’s stations; and a multi-purpose mezzanine. Pride of place within these moments is the espresso bar; the heart of the café, which affords people the opportunity to interact with the baristas and learn about the life of the coffee they’re enjoying. Clad in reclaimed offcuts of bricks diverted from landfills, the espresso bar features custom stainless steel and hardwood timber bench-tops.

Complementing the front of the house is a fully equipped commercial kitchen, cool room, storage and bin room; allowing the full café experience. The light-touch approach adopted in this fit-out riffs off the natural character of the building, and of Brunswick, and in doing so provides a space that can grow with the community.

Awards

VIC Architecture Awards 2021 Sustainability (Commended) DRIVENxDESIGN Melbourne Design Awards 2021 Interior Design, Hospitality, On the Go (Silver)

Photography by Tom Ross

We are proud to acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation, the Traditional Custodians of the land upon which Ona Coffee stands. We recognise their continuing connection to land, waters and culture.

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Our Approach

Breathe undertakes meaningful projects we can be proud of — those that align with our purpose and values.

Since we focus on maximising positive impact, many of our projects don’t fit the common definition of ‘architecture’.

We work to understand who we’re designing for. We strive to inspire, engage and support our clients and the broader communities we serve.

We prioritise social, environmental and economic sustainability in every project. We question the status quo to pursue outcomes that are informed by, and seek to better, those that came before.

Above all, we prioritise ethics along with aesthetics, and design without ego, to create the best outcomes for our clients and their communities.