Located inside New Zealand’s most seismic-resistant tall building, XXCQ cafe sit prestigiously inside the ground lobby space of the landmark Wellington building. Architecture within architecture, Heelee Studio was tasked to design the entire cafe pod structure as well as the final coordination of the project.

To complement the elegance of the lobby space, the cafe uses specifically manufactured aluminium fin cladding for the outer shell as well as stained oak veneer finish on the inside. One of the features of the cafe is the integrated menu-board on to the oak veneer wall panels. The integrated menu-board system becomes part of the pod architecture and achieves both the functional aspect of the café operations as well as giving an elegant finish to the café aesthetics.

For the front counter design, white soft-touch HPL panels were used on the sides to contrast with the black aluminium finish of the pod outer shell and a thin plate of stainless-steel benchtop was used to reinforce the signature stainless-steel look of “The Lab Food and Beverages” brand.