New Boutique Planet Espresso Café opens at Auckland City Hospital

Designed by Interior Designer, Amy Land for clients, Anna and Rob McGregor who have owned a successful espresso bar operating at Auckland City Hospital for thirteen years, it developed from the opportunity to move to an adjacent tenancy.

The new tenancy space informed the layout of the plan, with several key requirements from our clients- to increase capacity for serving more customers while maintaining the functionality of the original café design and overall to create a boutique espresso bar to go with the specialty coffee on offer.

Amy utilised the width of the space, presenting the front face of the café to customers, taking advantage of the majority of traffic approaching from the direction of the Hospital main entrance. This layout provides greater space for overflow of customers waiting and reducing congestion in the adjacent thoroughfare. Functionally, the counter design follows the same formula as its predecessor, a system staff are familiar with, allowing for an additional point of sale and coffee machine.

There were many considerations to designing a hospitality project within a hospital setting. Materiality was a really important tool to utilise in projecting the 'boutique' café atmosphere. It would have to simultaneously position itself as aesthetically different from the Hospital environment while remaining practical and meeting the requirements of other stakeholder, Auckland District Health Board's various panels, ensuring that physically, visually and cognitively impaired users would be able to successfully navigate the space. It was important for ADHB that the workflow and feel of the Hospital public areas were to be maintained and with a need for the space to feel light, bright and welcoming.

The selection of a minimal palette of quality materials helped to keep the interior design as clean and visually uncluttered as possible while creating impact and a high-end aesthetic. This was achieved through the use of marble-look porcelain, copper detailing, warm timber-look vinyl plank flooring, oak joinery and tropical wallpaper.

The outcome of this project is to contribute meaningfully to the development of the Hospital environment as a people-centred place. Have a look at the Planet Espresso project profile.