Costa Coffee

Costa Coffee Al Seef Interior Design.

Inspired by Al Sadu, a traditional weaving practice deeply rooted in Bedouin heritage, FINCH has created a new flagship store for Costa Coffee in Al Seef, Dubai. The store design takes its inspiration from the project’s locale, within the Dubai Creek, the main trade route that was instrumental in helping to build the Emirate. The new outlet is a departure from the brands’ modern footprint and is an example of the directive to have the brand and its stores become thoughtful and conscious of their environment, offering a more considered approach to their designs, whilst also avoiding a copy-and-paste approach to the rollout design.

FINCH creative director Emma Stinson, is a long-term UAE expat having been born and raised in the Emirate, her inspirations for the design come from core childhood memories of wandering the Creek with her parents and attending the old markets. Using Al Sadu and the Emirati pearl divers as inspiration, this 50 square meter store combines the best of modern Costa Coffee with eclectic nods to the café’s surroundings and heritage. The fusion of these historical nods can be seen within the interior, the raw and unfinished beauty of materials, such as rammed earth and clay-like walls embody the concept of Al Sadu with their pattern and prints, but equally still sit within the brand colors and guidelines of the modern Costa Coffee Brand.

There’s a mix of modern Costa furniture with custom-designed chairs that play with the idea of anchoring the boats of the pearl divers, as they are wrapped and adorned with hawser rope, an element that’s further used and tied to the Al Sadu concept in the ceiling as well as in the dividers. The window banquette tips its hat to the traditional majlis, but the juxtaposition of modern vs traditional comes to play once more with the modern pearl-inspired lighting features and the brass frames. This Costa Coffee project offers a sense of duality, the modern global brand vs a nontraditional or modern space with historical context.