The museum café, turned inside out.

Overview
When the Kyoto City KYOCERA Museum of Art reopened, it got a new café: ENFUSE. We developed the place concept and the brand, with WAT running the café and CHAB DESIGN on the interior.

Question
What’s a museum café really for?

Challenge
Jun Aoki’s redesign of the museum was going to change how people moved through Okazaki, the neighborhood around it. The café had to make the most of that, for museum visitors and for everyone else.

Approach
We didn’t start with the menu. We started with the history of cafés in modern museums, examples from around the world, and a lot of time in the neighborhood talking with the people who live there.

That gave us a point of view on what the café should do, and a name. ENFUSE means making something new while honoring what came before. In Kyoto, a city that has always reinvented itself, that felt right. The idea shaped the menu and the interior, and carried through to the identity, signage, website and merchandise.

Outcome
Not just somewhere to sit between galleries. A place where the museum and the neighborhood meet.