When you say William Thomas, Brnoers think of the best croissant in town, and it is Vilém and Tomáš who have been creating artisan bakeries for a few years now under their established brand. At the beginning of 2021 they invited us to realize the interior of the bakery with seating in Brno on Josefská Street. Alongside the design, their brand was being re-branded, so the collaboration was done together with the Simpléz graphic studio.

While the ground floor repeats the well-established concept of a shop where you can see directly into production and uses the same principles as the smaller branch on Jaselská Street, we had a relatively free hand on the second floor. The limiting factor was the space itself, rather than its specification: be it the relatively low vaulted traverse ceiling, the irregular walls, the placement of the air extraction within the façade or the already overhasty renovation of the sanitary facilities. The clients' idea was to extend the bakery concept to include a self-service seating area adjacent to the ground floor production area.

The new bakery brought a second wind to the declining pedestrian zone of Josefská Street: the large-format glazing of the shopfronts made it possible to orient part of the sales area towards the street. We used deep niches in the façade, which we framed in colour and placed seating in them, overlooking the ground floor of the Vorshile monastery and St. Joseph's Church. Unfortunately, the original intention of luminous decorative panels in the shopfront could no longer be realised due to the great pressure on the overall budget, and so the niches were left with only a two-tone design in a reflective gloss foil on a matt base.

In view of the irregularity of the space, the core of the layout on the first floor is dominated by a central upholstered bench, around which individual tables are arranged, complemented by classic Ton No. 14 café chairs in playful colours corresponding to the brand manual of the bakery. The furnishings are made of high-quality honey oak veneer with a precisely set pattern. The classic style of French artisan bakeries is evoked by the wall coverings and the rustic squeegee used on the walls instead of painting. While the tiling of the traverses with LED backlighting allowed for a visual increase in the light height of the space and the placement of a variable lighting system in the rails, the hygiene areas and the bakers' facilities were subtly shrouded in blue "darkness".

design and project 01-04 / 2021