Tea time waits for no one and the former Tea Rooms on London’s Museum Street is no exception, its Art Deco facade gracefully decaying as the years go by.

True Be Leafers

Located at 11 Museum Street in Bloomsbury, central London, the Tea Rooms was a cozy little cafe owned and operated by Eugenio and Rene (“Rina”) Corsini. The couple opened their doors in 1960 and proceeded to serve untold numbers of fresh cuppas over a 44-year span. When her husband passed away in 2000, Rene carried on: she said that catering to her beloved regular customers helped her in her bereavement. By 2004, however, rents in the trendy West End were rising and Rene decided to call it a day. The two photos above, snapped by Flickr member Nicholas Noyes in April of 2003 and January of 2005 respectively, bracket the last days of the Tea Rooms’ cozy, formica-lined existence.

Steeped In History

After it closed, the Tea Rooms embarked on a surreal sort of afterlife unintentionally documented by an unaffiliated succession of Flickr members month after month, year after year. The surreality comes into play as the former cafe’s facade inexorably evolves – or should we say, “devolves”. Perhaps the most obvious milestone in the shop’s decline occurred later in 2005 when, as shown above in Flickr member Esther Simpson‘s image from October, the three-piece plastic Art Deco-lettered sign either fell down or was manually removed revealing the original hand-painted ghost sign that had been hidden underneath.

In Hot Water

By the time Flickr member T & L snapped the above shot in mid-2008, this section of Museum Street was looking grim indeed… and we’re not only referring to the demonic face an anonymous street artist applied to the Tea Rooms’ front door. Rather, the issue of increasing rents alluded to by Rene Corsini in director Paul Kelly’s 2004 short film would appear to have caused the “Joie” clothing store next-door to close shop as well.

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Tead Off Abandoned Museum Street Tea Rooms

Starbucks‘ new double-decker drive thru restaurant and cafe in Taiwan’s Hualien Bay Mall was constructed using 29 recycled shipping containers.

Starbucks may be known for spelling (and occasionally misspelling) customers’ names on its containers but that hasn’t put the coffee superpower off containers per se. Far from it, in fact: re-purposing shipping containers into sipping cafes fits hand-in-glove with the firm’s environmentally-friendly Greener Stores framework, a program that aims to design, build and operate 10,000 greener Starbucks stores globally by the year 2025.

Containerment Strategy

Our featured Starbucks store is the first retail storefront to open in the Hualien Bay Mall, located in the Taiwanese city of Hualien. This city of just over 100,000 residents is located on the Pacific Ocean seashore in northeastern Taiwan, roughly 30 minutes by air from the capital city of Taipei. The store is designed to serve customers on-the-go via an integrated drive thru, or indoors where 320 square meters (3,445 square feet) of well-lit, comfortably furnished space fosters an atmosphere of peaceful relaxation. Website YA! Travel posted the images above on September 25th of 2018.

Cargo Coffee Cult

Renowned Japanese architect Kengo Kuma penned the store’s exterior design, shown above under construction in early 2018. This isn’t Kuma’s first espresso-shot, either: his name is written all over (figuratively speaking) a Starbucks store in the southern Japanese city of Fukuoka and the highly anticipated Starbucks Reserve Roastery in Tokyo. Those two projects don’t involve the use of shipping containers, however, as Kuma has never worked with this “medium” in ANY of his previous projects.

Shipping Manifesto Destiny

Working with shipping containers poses certain challenges to architects, putting it mildly, but the jumbo metal boxes offer certain benefits. In the case of the Hualien Bay Mall store, stacking the shipping containers one atop the other resulted in a much taller main floor ceiling. The containers are also amenable to modifications such as skylights, which allow for the ingress of natural sunlight. Off-the-shelf shipping containers aren’t exactly known for being inwardly brilliant.

29 Containers 4 Cups

Dressing up the Starbucks store’s interior – aka, reducing the cold, harsh, shipping container vibe – took a colossal effort but the results speak for themselves. OK, we’ll speak a bit as well: the decor style was an homage to the rich cultural history of Hualien City. Colorful murals evoke the heritage of the Sakiraya Taiwanese aboriginal people who gave the town its original name of “Kiray”. Plush, comfortable customer seating areas provide scenic views of the rugged Zhongyang (“Central”) mountain range. Other graphic decor features illustrate the story of coffee, one of humanity’s most cherished beverages. Those coffee cups are cool, too.

‘Bucking Trends

The Starbucks “Greener Stores” initiative, announced on-stage at The Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco, aims to save the company roughly $50 million in utilities costs over the coming decade. The framework is to be co-developed with leading environmental experts including the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), while its ongoing effectiveness will be audited and verified by Scientific Certification Systems Global Services. “This framework represents the next step in how Starbucks is approaching environmental stewardship,” stated Erin Simon, Director of R&D at WWF US, “looking holistically at stores and their role in helping to ensure the future health of our natural resources.”

Containers, Caffeine, Contentment

The new Starbucks store at the Hualien Bay Mall in Taiwan is the latest cafe to be constructed from recycled shipping containers. In the United States alone, Starbucks has opened 45 modular cafes, pre-fabricated and built off-site. This construction method allows Starbucks to open stores in areas and regions that are not easily amenable to traditional store construction. At the same time, the company can minimize the environmental impact of construction while integrating reused, recycled and reclaimed materials in their designs.

Taiwan, West of Java

After a slow start, Starbucks seems to have embraced the concept of green business as appealing to its target demographic without abandoning the pursuit of profits. The push is coming from the executive suite. “Simply put, sustainable coffee, served sustainably is our aspiration,” states Kevin Johnson, President and CEO of Starbucks. “We know that designing and building green stores is not only responsible, it is cost effective as well.” Mull on that a while – while you sip a frappuccino, of course.

These 15 drained, disused & abandoned coffee shops recall a kinder, gentler, perkier time before Starbucks rebrewed the latte lover’s landscape.

Black gold, Texas tea… not the rich dark liquid you were looking for? Well you’re lookin’ in the wrong place, pardner. Said to be “a far West Texas oil town eatery” that last flourished along with the rest of Penwell, Texas back in the Roaring Twenties, the Joker Coffee Shop looks to have last provided service (with a smile) long, long ago.

Regarding the stuffed leopard in the former cafe’s restroom, let’s just say they didn’t call it The Joker for nothing. Hey kitty, why so serious?

Beaver Tales

Here’s a late and no doubt lamented “abandoned coffee shop/adult entertainment facility” in Okayama, Japan. The place’s name is “Beaver” (of course); Flickr user Trevor Williams visited the site in June of 2009 for some, shall we say, “creative photography” and we are SO glad he did!

3 Stars, Yer Out!

Central Perk it ain’t… The cozy 3 Star Coffee Shop on Columbus Avenue at 86th Street in Manhattan’s West Side has seen better days, as have almost every other store on the block.

West Side Rag‘s “intrepid tipster Kenneth” (hey, it’s better than being an intrepid hipster) was sent to check out the abandoned coffee shop in August of 2014 and he was, shall we say, less than impressed: “Half torn out. There must have been 1 million flies inside. Clearly, food must have been left inside.” Guess their signature Donut Burger Sandwiches didn’t exactly sell like Cronuts.

Hey Jo…

Starbucks may have dealt traditional coffee shops a wicked uppercut; then McCafe moved in to deliver the knockout punch – at least, such can be surmised about the above abandoned Jo To Go in Savannah, Georgia. “This drive-thru coffee shop was built in the parking lot of the shopping center at the corner of Waters Ave. and Eisenhower Drive, behind a McDonald’s, in the spring or summer of 2007,” according to Flickr user C-Bunny, “and had closed sometime earlier this (2010) year.”

Denny’s Destiny

When Flickr user Charles Hathaway snapped the sad state of Denny’s Coffee Shop (and adjoining motel) in Palm Springs, California, he hedged his commentary by stating “It seems like someone has bought the land with the intention of re-opening the motel.” Hope someone’s watering the palms in the meantime.

“A restaurant will likely open in this former Denny’s once the motel opens.” That was in January of 2008… what was the ultimate fate of this palm-treed oasis and its Space Age architecture and awesome flying saucer chandelier?

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No Perking 15 Drained Dry Abandoned Coffee Shops

Looking like a bookshop flipped ninety degrees, this coffee shop stands out even in Manhattan, a world of off-the-wall spaces and strange conceptual designs.

This new location for D’espresso was crated by Nemaworkshop, “a team of architects, designers and thinkers who create spaces which are conceptually bold yet highly sensitive to cultural and social contexts.”

Referencing the historical combination of cafes and bookstores as well as the nearby New York Public Library, the book photographs wrapping the floor, back wall and ceiling above become conversation pieces as well as a wraparound backdrop for sipping lattes. Meanwhile, the ‘floor’ on the left wall provides a backdrop for seating and contrasts with the functional ‘ceiling’ lighting on the right, which illuminates and differentiates the service space behind the counter.

About Nemaworkshop: “The studio approaches projects through research and collaborative brainstorming wherein ideas are discussed and reworked until a team emerges with a single cohesive concept.” Like its results, “the process is a non-linear approach, adhering to the conviction that good ideas can come from unlikely places. Ultimately, the designs challenge architectural typologies, demonstrate acute cultural awareness and propose original spatial concepts.

About this particular project itself, the designers write: “The client approached nemaworkshop with a single espresso bar existing and the ambition to build an espresso empire. For the location for the second shop, on Madison and backs up to Grand Central Terminal, Nemaworkshop and the client agreed that the design needed to be immediately striking to the goal-oriented suits and wandering tourists alike.”

A giant two-story camera rises from the grass beside an ordinary suburban home in the hills of South Korea. The Dreamy Camera Cafe is housed in a re-creation of a vintage Rolleiflex, featuring two lens-like oversized windows offering panoramic views of the surrounding countryside.

The cafe was built by a former army helicopter pilot with a passion for photography and vintage cameras, who lives in the house next door with his family. A range of miniature and toy cameras are displayed on the first floor, with a collection of photographs tacked on the walls upstairs. The cafe even has paper towel holders shaped like film canisters.

It may be unusual, but the Dreamy Camera Cafe is hardly the first building shaped like a giant object – there’s a 40-foot-tall milk bottle building among others modeled after food items, and even a house shaped like a toilet.