When tasked with designing client Ben Johnson’s new artisan chocolatier, Blue Table Chocolates, designers Seth Amman and Adam McCullough of architectural studio Arch&Type avoided clichés such as cocoa beans painted on the walls, instead opting to explore the emotional and physiological impacts of chocolate, and presenting the feeling through material and space.
Situated in a 780 square foot space in Buffalo, NY, and as a place for cacao aficionados to purchase unique hand made creations, Blue Table Chocolates’ new shop is distinctly Buffalo, despite lacking elements typical of the city’s architecture.
Following on from an image that Johnson presented to the designers “of untempered crystallised chocolate: melted, silky, and flowing,” the premises features a palette of soft matte white oak balanced by subtle lime-wash paint, large aggregate concrete, mirrored metal, and gold. Brass accents along the casework and wall bases tie into the undulating ceiling installation. Together, these elements coalesce into a sort of surplus-quality, augmenting one another by the sensuous act of biting into a truffle that slowly melts to reveal an equally ‘surplus’ flavour profile.
The ceiling, originally intended as a near-seamless mirrored plane, is now a sculptural piece. The wall separating the retail zone from the kitchen, meant to be glass, is a stud wall with a large window, and a frameless door painted to match the lime-wash casework, originally intended for the west wall in the chocolate workshop, has been transformed into four custom tables.
Featuring design as delectable as the goods housed within its four walls, Blue Table Chocolates Buffalo is a physical representation of the intangible essence that chocolate makes us feel.
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Photography © 2022 Kim Smith.
