Enjoy a virtual coffee in this virtual gallery
For the London Design Festival 2021, the design studio Giles Miller Studio and the cult coffee brand cult London Grind are collaborating on a new type of virtual space
Many months of blockage had the effect of making most of us more confident in digital realities, but also tired of them. Maybe we would have gotten used to having work meetings at Zoom, but having a coffee? Surely this is something we can still do beyond a screen.
London-based architectural design and practice Giles Miller Studio calls for differences and its virtual cafeteria is an attempt to explore how virtual reality can be used to reconfigure spaces beyond the increasingly popular art galleries. VR or commercial spaces.
Visitors to the digital space will find themselves walking through a lush, park-like environment and into the Giles Miller Gallery space. Once inside, you can see Giles Miller’s exhibitions or visit the café created in collaboration with the London coffee brand Grind.
The study says that its digital cafeteria does not aim to recreate the typical coffee experience but to offer a new dimension by making the visit to the cafeteria done in digital format.
“As a digital entity, our bar is not the usual, warm, crowded space for people to get together, work, and relax,” the study says. “Instead, it’s a digital space where visitors from around the world can instantly experience an idea of how Giles Miller Studio’s creative production works, as well as some of the beautiful products on offer from the Giles Miller Studio brand. cult coffee Grind “.
So while you can’t buy a coffee, you can see Grind’s own pods machine, designed to get the most out of its Nespresso compostable pods and inspired by the Italian espresso machines used every day at their London cafes and can submit to a competition. win your own (non-virtual) machine.
From Grind’s perspective, the project is a way of adapting to the times. “When we had to close our doors due to the pandemic, we faced the challenge of bringing Grind to life in a whole new way for us and we spent our time shutting down helping people make better coffee and more sustainable at home, ”says the brand.
Eco-friendly coffee by-product tiles adorn the facility
“We couldn’t wait to reopen and we’re very grateful to welcome people back to our cafes now, but we’re excited to find new ways to meet people and bring them together for a coffee to move forward. Working with Giles Miller Studio in this project allowed us to do just that, as well as celebrate some of the incredible work that the studio has done with its organic tile, made from the by-products of coffee processing. they use to add texture to the wavy shelves that are seen in the cafeteria space.
It’s an interesting foray into the metaverse, which, as Giles Miller describes it, “gives visitors a chance to see how a design studio obsessed with materials and a very real coffee brand have chosen to experiment in the new digital world. “. §