Café Pista in Montréal, Canada by Les Ateliers Guyon

Article source: v2com

As a continuation to the implementation of food trucks in Montreal, the Pista Café Mobile, where you can find some of the best coffee in town, was created a little over two years ago as a tricycle/invention. After being showcased in all of Montreal’s festivals, the Pista Café tricycle found an address of its own in the heart of Rosemont-La Petite-Patrie.

Image Courtesy © Éliott Légaré

• Architects: Les Ateliers Guyon
• Project: Café Pista
• Location: Montréal, Canada
• Photography: Éliott Légaré and EGP TechnoVirtuel inc.

Image Courtesy © Éliott Légaré

The goal: To make the shift from being a nomad café to being a sedentary one, while still keeping a street stall feel.  The chosen location, on the corner of Beaubien and Saint-Vallier, is imbued with both history and character. We’re looking at a simple and refreshing concept: to create a cozy, luminous and unique spot where the inside recreates the outside. What a wonderful challenge for Les Ateliers Guyon design studio.

After roaming its share of Montreal streets, being part of each of the city’s great events and travelling over 360 km to grind coffee, the Pista Café team called upon Les Ateliers Guyon to design a unique yet familiar universe. Maxime Richard, Pista Café’s owner, tells us: “The Pista Café Mobile is a tricycle which combines human power, technology and the pleasure of a good coffee. The bike itself, completely independent from any other source of energy, relies solely on legs and pedals to provide freshly ground coffee beans.”

Image Courtesy © EGP TechnoVirtuel inc.

Bringing the outside in

The tricycle concept Pista Café Mobile was the first inspiration for the designers at Les Ateliers Guyon. Félix Guyon explains: “The idea of bringing the outside in came to us instinctively. It wasn’t just our gut feeling; as the concept was a natural extension of the original Pista Café. We wanted to give users an enjoyable, friendly and unpretentious experience in a bright, refreshing space. The idea was simply to make the Café an inviting place, so the customers would feel like they were walking about or sitting in a park. We never thought we would literally bring the outside inside, but it figured that subtle evocation of the volumetric and functional properties of a food-truck-type service were to surface through our refreshing design.”

Image Courtesy © EGP TechnoVirtuel inc.

The Café is divided in two separate sections. On one side lies a long bench, its colors soft and lively, allowing the location’s natural light to shine. On the other, the service section is hemmed in a container-inspired workspace where customers get served as if they were sitting on a food truck stool, waiting for their order. Within this workspace there’s even a place designed especially for the tricycle as there is a little workshop where it can be stored, repaired and admired by the patrons. According to Audrée L. Larose, designer at Les Ateliers Guyon: “From the very beginning, our clients were adamant on the matter: they want the bike, which gets a lot of looks on the street, to be integrated in the design so it can still be gazed upon. But they also made it clear that they didn’t want the whole place to be tricycle-themed. We believe we achieved, through this project, a perfect blend, subtle yet bold, of their first intentions and our concept to bring the outside in.”

Image Courtesy © Éliott Légaré

The conceptual approach to design, from Les Ateliers Guyon

Les Ateliers Guyon has been specialized in object design and interior design for over 5 years now and still manages to take us to a foreign world with every creation. Félix Guyon, owner and designer, explains his vision of what design should be and how his ever-growing business taps into that vision: “Chiefly, a good design must not only meet the client’s requirements, but also that of the user, while bringing their basic needs to a higher level. To ensure that the space or object is deemed comfortable and user-friendly, proper design always comes first for us. Yet, at home, it’s still not enough; we need to add some hot sauce to the mix! Contrasts always find a place in our projects, just like sweet and salty complement one another. When this is not reflected by styles from different times, it can be found in the materials used, in textures, volumes or light sources that cross and give us the edge we’re always looking for. Magic, in all its poetry, must reign over every piece we create, in a subtle marriage between formal and conceptual elements colliding in a unique and calculated design!”

Image Courtesy © Éliott Légaré

Les Ateliers Guyon / Larose Guyon 

Félix Guyon, founder at Les Ateliers Guyon, has given birth to a second company specializing in luminaire design, along with its cofounder Audrée L.Larose, called Larose Guyon.

Audrée L. Larose and Félix Guyon, design lovers and lovers in life, combine both of their visions and offer a design both masculine and feminine, where contrasts confront each other in a meticulous, subtle and bold design. They tell us their story: “We literally found each other, we form the best possible team we could have imagined. Our strengths support the other’s weaknesses and vice versa. From our often opposed visions arise results which surpass  our first intentions every time. We like to see ourselves as follows: Félix is a burst of ideas and Audrée is the funnel which refines and gives focus!’’ Together they become a “dream team“, as they put it themselves, laughing.

Their combination recently led them to present their Larose-Guyon Luminaire project at ICFF 2016, in New York. An artistic installation project for a few Chicago hotels is also in the works. These two multidisciplinary designers should stay on your radar, as it looks like their next projects are going to be more and more surprising!

Tags: Canada, Montreal

Category: Cafe

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