STEAMhouse – Birmingham City University

Birmingham City University reached out to us to re-evaluate their food offer within their historic STEAMhouse building. The existing space housed a double sided coffee bar, and a very small prep kitchen.

Due to the size of the campus, and its high street position within the city, the old coffee bar couldn’t cope with capacity, and the food offer had to be limited, due to lack of prep space.

Our proposal looked at the area as a blank slate, and helped to address the issues. This allowed for a new extended kitchen space to add a full dishwasher room, a cookline, and much needed extra prep and store space. This could then allow for a much more varied lunch offer, as well as helping to ease the pressure on the hospitality and events teams, who could also use the new facilities.

The existing counters were very large, but not very practical. To tackle this, we proposed a new wrap around counter which has a much clearer customer journey; as well as incorporating a small bar area for evening events, coffee and sandwich prep as well as bespoke gantry to house digital screens and lighting.

The result is a very seamless transition from coffee bar to the new extended kitchen. And although the seating area has reduced in size, clever spatial planning allowed for new furniture to create a comfortable and welcoming space to sit, work and dine.

Charcoal colour powder coated corrugated metal sheets form the rear of the counter, and is a running theme throughout the design. Bespoke lighting adds warmth and a branding opportunity, and helps to set the mood on a gloomy day. With a core palette of neutral colours, black, grey and white all helping to tie the new area into the industrial look and feel of the STEAMhouse building.

This was a full turnkey project, with D3 Design carrying out the full mechanical and electrical alterations, lighting schedule, extraction and fire safety systems.