INDUSTRY BEANS FITZROY
2021
Industry Beans’ new headquarters occupies a 650-square-metre sawtooth warehouse in the heart of Fitzroy, just streets away from where the company first began. The relocation of its Fitzroy café to this expansive warehouse setting marks both a return to origins and a confident evolution of its neighbourhood presence; consolidating everything ‘coffee‘, from roasting, packing, hospitality, and retail within a single, generous industrial shell.
The design works carefully with the existing warehouse fabric and the fixed logic of in-ground services, embracing constraint as a framework for clarity. Rather than overwrite the building, the intervention pares the interior back to its essential structure, retaining beams, columns, and the rhythmic geometry of the sawtooth roof. This structural logic informs the ultimate location of the programme, while the bright, skylit interior allows natural light to wash across the space and amplify the building’s industrial texture.
At ground level, the headquarters integrates a working roasting warehouse for dispatch, a commercial kitchen and carefully planned back-of-house areas, a café and retail floor, tasting zones, and seating for 84 patrons. A small upstairs office overlooks the operation below, reinforcing the relationship between production and hospitality. A courtyard anchored by a single tree provides relief and light, extending the experience beyond the industrial envelope.
The material palette adopts Industry Beans’ signature Surfmist white as a unifying field—amplifying daylight drawn through the sawtooth roof and creating a calm backdrop to the intensity of roasting and service. Within this restrained shell, zones are defined through strategically placed elements: banquette seating, articulated coffee bars, mesh screens, and carefully framed views into the roaster. Recycled timber tables introduce warmth and tactility, softening the warehouse shell and creating a refreshing, human-scaled atmosphere within the larger volume.
At the centre of the café is a state-of-the-art Modbar system, seamlessly integrated into a refined coffee bar that prioritises interaction between barista and customer. Large internal windows frame views into the working roastery, reinforcing transparency and celebrating the craft of coffee-making as part of the daily experience. A tasting zone and curated retail area, stocked with coffee products and home brewing equipment, extend the brand experience from cup to home.
Structural expression is foregrounded rather than concealed. Exposed beams and columns are celebrated, with mesh and layered planting softening their presence. An extensive array of plants climbs and cascades around and above the retail floor, animated by filtered light from above, introducing texture, movement, and seasonality into the space.
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HOSPITALITY
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COMPLETED 2021
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WURUNDJERI | FITZROY
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BUILDER | REVIVAL
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COMPLETED PHOTOS | PETER BENNETTS