Taste test: Design, Bitches create a coffee training centre for Counter Culture

The feted Counter Culture coffee company has brought its know-how, tastings and professional education program to the hip area of Silver Lake in Los Angeles. With plans to open in Seattle, Dallas and Miami next, the North Carolina-based roaster is offering both industry support and public-access coffee brewing classes.
Conceived by Catherine Johnson and Rebecca Rudolph, the duo behind Design, Bitches, the training center is a unique work and play space. 'We took a lot of inspiration from the 1940s streamlined art deco building and from the artistic neighbourhood – from a vibrant exterior colour to [an] interior finish that reflects a California-centric indoor/outdoor sensibility,' they explain.
Organised in a plus formation with two relatively equal axes, the interior space is activated in multiple directions and allows for maximum flexibility and connection to the outdoor space. 'Multiple stations have been set up for espresso and pour-over brewing around the "ziggurat" – a central seating element which acts as room divider, seating for classes when in session and a casual, flexible work space,' Johnson continues.
'Counter Culture's Training Centres serve many purposes for the cities they operate in. First and foremost, they are a classroom where we are able to facilitate a curriculum of coffee education that we offer exclusively to our wholesale partners,' says Jesse Kahn, Counter Culture's national wholesale manager and head of training centre development. 'The spaces are the uniquest [sic] of offices, allowing our regional staff and our partners access to anything and everything they need to learn and engage about coffee.'
The space, located in the hip area of Silver Lake, will be used for tastings, a professional education program and coffee brewing classes for the public.
’We took a lot of inspiration from the 1940s streamlined art deco building and from the artistic neighbourhood – from a vibrant exterior colour to [an] interior finish that reflects a California-centric indoor/outdoor sensibility,’ the duo explains.
Organised in a plus formation with two relatively equal axes, the interior space is activated in multiple directions and allows for maximum flexibility and connection to the outdoor space.
Johnson continues, ’Multiple stations have been set up for espresso and pour-over brewing around the "ziggurat" – a central seating element which acts as room divider, seating for classes when in session and a casual, flexible work space’.
Says Jesse Kahn, Counter Culture’s national wholesale manager and head of training centre development, ’The spaces are the uniquest [sic] of offices, allowing our regional staff and our partners access to anything and everything they need to learn and engage about coffee’.
INFORMATION
For more information, visit the Counter Culture website
Wallpaper* Newsletter
Receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories from around the world direct to your inbox.
ADDRESS
Counter Culture Training Centre
1601 Griffith Park Blvd
Silver Lake, LA
Daniel Scheffler is a storyteller for The New York Times and others. He has a travel podcast with iHeart Media called Everywhere and a Substack newsletter, Withoutmaps, where he shares all his wild ways. He lives in New York with his husband and their pup.
-
Highlights from the transporting Cruise 2026 shows
The Cruise 2026 season began yesterday with a Chanel show at Lake Como, heralding the start of a series of jet-setting, destination runway shows from fashion’s biggest houses
-
Behind the design of national pavilions in Venice: three studios to know
Designing the British, Swiss and Mexican national pavilions at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2025 are three outstanding studios to know before you go
-
Premium patisserie Naya is Mayfair’s latest sweet spot
Heritage meets opulence at Naya bakery in Mayfair, London. With interiors by India Hicks and Anna Goulandris, the patisserie looks good enough to eat
-
Los Angeles businesses regroup after the 2025 fires
In the third instalment of our Rebuilding LA series, we zoom in on Los Angeles businesses and the architecture and social fabric around them within the impacted Los Angeles neighbourhoods
-
‘Fall Guy’ director David Leitch takes us inside his breathtaking Los Angeles home
For movie power couple David Leitch and Kelly McCormick, interior designer Vanessa Alexander crafts a home with the ultimate Hollywood ending
-
The Lighthouse draws on Bauhaus principles to create a new-era workspace campus
The Lighthouse, a Los Angeles office space by Warkentin Associates, brings together Bauhaus, brutalism and contemporary workspace design trends
-
This minimalist Wyoming retreat is the perfect place to unplug
This woodland home that espouses the virtues of simplicity, containing barely any furniture and having used only three materials in its construction
-
We explore Franklin Israel’s lesser-known, progressive, deconstructivist architecture
Franklin Israel, a progressive Californian architect whose life was cut short in 1996 at the age of 50, is celebrated in a new book that examines his work and legacy
-
A new hilltop California home is rooted in the landscape and celebrates views of nature
WOJR's California home House of Horns is a meticulously planned modern villa that seeps into its surrounding landscape through a series of sculptural courtyards
-
The Frick Collection's expansion by Selldorf Architects is both surgical and delicate
The New York cultural institution gets a $220 million glow-up
-
Remembering architect David M Childs (1941-2025) and his New York skyline legacy
David M Childs, a former chairman of architectural powerhouse SOM, has passed away. We celebrate his professional achievements