Cafe and showroom
Dutch Bike Company
The owners of the Dutch Bike Company came to us with a big challenge: they wanted to create a new "flagship" store for their rapidly expanding brand, which has a thriving online presence, another shop in Chicago, and plans for further national expansion.
Their were two main challenges with this project; first, the program. The bike shop needed to provide a clean, uncluttered space to showcase their European "city bikes", and also needed mechanic's shop space to assemble new bikes and maintain and repair existing ones. Oh, and a coffee shop, too.
The second challenge was the space. The shop is located in Ballard's reimagined Kolstrand building, in the smaller of two ground-floor storefronts. After the exit hallways and stairs for the adjacent restaurants and upstairs tenants were planned, Dutch Bike Co. was invited to occupy the rest of the space. The result is a long, serpentine space pinched in the middle with a concrete stair core.
We used the stair core to our advantage, organizing the program elements around it after decorating it with our own perverse form of Delftware patterning (design by Edwin Fotheringham, execution by Kelly Staton).