élan

The most designed coffee bar in Oslo, and the newest of the rooms here. Snøhetta, the studio behind the opera house, took the former Magnat Kaffehus showroom in the Sjøfartsbygningen in Kvadraturen and built élan inside it: a circular dark stained oak counter wrapped around a sculptural volume of carved, heat treated cork, with a turquoise ceiling installation that doubles as a directional speaker.

The palette is taken from the anatomy of a coffee cherry, deep red, silver and a turquoise green that also picks up the oxidised copper on the building outside. Magnat Kaffehus operates it, importing and roasting in its own laboratory, so the coffee is meant to carry the room rather than the other way round. Whether it does is the question worth going to answer.