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
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.
-
Introducing the design-led Split Watches, a force for good
Good design is given a charitable spin by Split Watches – for every one sold, the company donates an hour of therapy
-
Meet the New York-based artists destabilising the boundaries of society
A new show in London presents seven young New York-based artists who are pushing against the borders between refined aesthetics and primal materiality
-
Inside a Montana house, putting the American West's landscape at its heart
A holiday house in the Montana mountains, designed by Walker Warner Architects and Gachot Studios, scales new heights to create a fresh perspective on communing with the natural landscape
-
Inside a Montana house, putting the American West's landscape at its heart
A holiday house in the Montana mountains, designed by Walker Warner Architects and Gachot Studios, scales new heights to create a fresh perspective on communing with the natural landscape
-
The great American museum boom
Nine of the world’s top ten most expensive, recently announced cultural projects are in the US. What is driving this investment, and is this statistic sustainable?
-
Peel back this Michigan lakeside house’s cool slate exterior to reveal a warm wooden home
In Detroit, Michigan, this lakeside house, a Y-shaped home by Disbrow Iannuzzi Architects, creates a soft balance between darkness and light through its minimalist materiality
-
Inside the new theatre at Jacob’s Pillow and its ‘magic box’, part of a pioneering complex designed for dance
Jacob’s Pillow welcomes the reborn Doris Duke Theatre by Mecanoo, a new space that has just opened in the beloved Berkshires cultural hub for the summer season
-
A Rancho Mirage home is in tune with its location and its architect-owners’ passions
Architect Steven Harris and his collaborator and husband, designer Lucien Rees Roberts, have built a home in Rancho Mirage, surrounded by some of America’s most iconic midcentury modern works; they invited us on a tour
-
Inside Frank Lloyd Wright’s Laurent House – a project built with accessibility at its heart
The dwelling, which you can visit in Illinois, is a classic example of Wright’s Usonian architecture, and was also built for a client with a disability long before accessibility was widely considered
-
Tour this fire-resilient minimalist weekend retreat in California
A minimalist weekend retreat was designed as a counterpoint to a San Francisco pied-à-terre; Edmonds + Lee Architects’ Amnesia House in Napa Valley is a place for making memories
-
A New Zealand house on a rugged beach exemplifies architect Tom Kundig's approach in rich, yet understated luxury
This coastal home, featured in 'Tom Kundig: Complete Houses', a new book launch in the autumn by Monacelli Press, is a perfect example of its author's approach to understated luxury. We spoke to Tom Kundig, the architect behind it