Cafe One

Sterling’s Cafe One

Lagos, Nigeria

Interior Design
Lighting Design
Workplace Strategy
Construction

“Every Cafe One will have a bank, and every Sterling bank will have a Cafe One”.

Cafe One by Sterling has made significant progress in terms of launching products that reflect how banking could be like in the near future. They make a bold claim that this will not exactly be the case, instead, the banks of the future will be seamlessly plugged into our everyday activities.

So when they approached Micdee that they wanted us to design their second outlet, we understood that beyond just adequately responding to the brief, they needed a space that reflected their vision of the future of banking.

Designing the future of banking.

“

Fostering an environment
that inspires Innovation.

Based off a strategy session with the client and prior understanding of the Cafe One brand, we understood that we needed to make provision for a bank, a coffee shop, a co-working and event space. It was to accommodate between 20 - 25 persons.

This posed a unique challenge as each of these activities belonged to various stakeholders that had their own requirements. We understood that we needed to employ our expertise to decipher pain points and prioritize them - even if it includes making the necessary compromises - with what is attainable within our constraints of time and budget.

We found this to be an interesting challenge, but it got more exciting when we realized that all of this has to be done in a space less than 100sqm.

The results

Based on the challenges we established from our strategy sessions, it became evident that we needed a single theme that largely addressed the several stakeholders.

The theme involved a flow that maps out the user experience for several customer types; from the entrance, users of the space are welcomed by the interactive banking stand, in close proximity with the central seating area which has been designed in a way that sparks spontaneous interactions and community - a key theme of the Cafe One brand.

The perimeter seating are optimized for co-working while the coffee area is located just beside the entrance door to allow persons to simply get coffee and leave if they are not ready to experience the space yet. The overall theme of the space is heavily influenced by the Cafe One minimalist brand while paying homage to Sterling Bank through subtle pops of red.

The result is a space with an atmosphere of calm and freshly brewed coffee. People can get important work done while drinking coffee, create meaningful personal relationships or find cliques within their work sector they can bond with. They can do this while also being able to access full banking services right from the same space.