Situated within the Qutub Institutional Area in the brimming city of New Delhi, India, amid an array of bars and lounges which cater to an explicit gentry, Avokado persists as a space that caters to all.
The café is built in an establishment where the neighboring places vaunt about presenting a tapas bar experience. On the contrary, Avokado was deliberated and designed to go against the grain of the context it sits in, and behave as an oasis for a relaxing retreat for all, while provoking a contradiction to the model of a well- functioning bar experience in the capital.
Project Name: Avokado
Studio Name: Studio Dangg
Avokado is prudently designed around trees dispersed within the site to indubitable catalyze a sublime outdoor experience in a site at one of the most premium locales in the city. It renders inspiration from both the Indian and Mediterranean palettes, while presenting a diverse amalgam of the two varied but equally alluring tropical aesthetics. The project was conceived as a transient portal, designed to transport all in attendance to the tropics.
The larger, halfway covered areas that flank the open-air seating sweep along a curve to soften the visual enfoldment of the space, a form that almost provides for a certain airiness to the unmalleable brick & mortar seating arrangement of the bars surrounding the café. The outdoor seating, elaborated with its augmented iteration of the orthodox roof, provides a natural relief during the Delhi summer, while the central open-air seating lends an equally sunny leisure for the Delhi winter.
While the bamboo and thatch bring in the Indian Tropical roofing in a spiffy setting with its more unexacting detailing, the tessellated basalt flooring is quite symbolic of the Greek streets of Mykonos. The cane lamps bring forth a more elementary take on Indian cane handicrafts, and the smoothness of the Bohemian macrame fully provide an anchorage to each other as elements from two very different backgrounds that enhance each other through the utter congruity of being two heterogenous vernaculars of the tropics.
The fountain standing proud in the centre of the space as a fundamental adornment greets one at the entrance, divulges one with the memorabilia of a Goan backyard. The rather clean and minimal continuance of the furniture surprises the patrons with the only Nordic element, lending a finesse to a backdrop that is otherwise dominantly tropical. The furniture is yet again decked with soft furnishing supplements that revive macrame in another language – with the addition of handloom jute rugs. The palette is detached enough to even out the materiality of the café, while simultaneously enabling its warmth to shine through. The seating areas further mellowed with linen curtains providing the option of quick privacy, as and when required by larger groups.
In its context, Avokado comports as a grand step-out for a quick breath of fresh air, usable by large groups or young crowds alike. The sheer breeziness of Avokado, visual, literal, and figurative, is an open invitation to all that pass it by, and can’t help but be appeased by the simplicity and modernity of the café. It is an atmosphere that incessantly beams through its meticulously intended menu, and the attentive accents.
Atypical to any other day-café, the characteristic of Avokado that disengages itself from being contained within the generalized umbrella of what a café means to the end user is that it transforms into a Bohemian bar at sun-down, and continues to service its patrons much later into the night. In a culture of bar hopping and late-night munching, Avokado is the new-age comfort spot, perfect for a quick late-night snack, or a relaxed evening, in lieu of the usual densities of a crowded weekend night.
Avokado is a brief tropical interlude, a pause in a culture of consistency and chaos, providing meaning and value to a culmination of two varied yet exquisite design languages.
