Blue Bottle Coffee Toyosu Park
Nestled along the waterfront of Tokyo Bay, the Blue Bottle Coffee Toyosu Park Café redefines the boundaries between architecture and nature. Designed by Jo Nagasaka and Schemata Architects, this new outpost is more than a café-it’s an invitation to experience the park as an extension of the coffeehouse, and vice versa.
Rather than imposing a single, monolithic structure, the architects envisioned the café as a cluster of intimate, human-scale huts. These volumes, with their sloping roofs and varying heights, blend seamlessly into the park’s landscape, echoing the rhythm of the surrounding trees and lawns. The result is a building that feels both open and inviting, dissolving the traditional barriers between indoors and outdoors.
A key design strategy is the gradational transition between outdoor, semi-outdoor, and indoor spaces. Expansive eaves and semi-enclosed terraces serve as gentle thresholds, offering shaded spots reminiscent of lounging beneath a tree canopy. Glass panels at eye level frame unobstructed views of Tokyo Bay, while bricks flow uninterrupted from exterior paths to interior floors, further erasing the sense of division.
Materiality is subtle yet purposeful. The upper facades are clad in fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP), diffusing natural light and enveloping the space in a soft glow. This same FRP forms cantilevered tables that attach to the wooden columns, merging architecture and furniture into a unified gesture.
Inside, the café offers a spectrum of experiences: high-ceilinged communal tables encourage lively interaction, while more intimate, low-ceilinged zones provide serene retreats with panoramic park and sea views. The overall effect is a fluid, minimalist environment where every detail is designed to foster connection-between people, between spaces, and between city and nature.
At Toyosu Park, Blue Bottle Coffee’s latest venture is not just a destination, but a seamless part of the urban fabric-a place where the city’s energy and the tranquility of the bay coexist in perfect harmony.