IMA Pantry Leftfield

IMA Pantry is a café and food store with a contemporary Japanese flavour.  The offering includes Japanese specialties as well as more familiar items but common to everything is quality and thoughtful curation. 

This was a lovely project for Kennedy Nolan.  The proprietor is a friend of the practice who has fed and hosted us over many years and she came to us because of this relationship and also because the tenancy is on the Ground Floor of Nightingale Leftfield, the apartment building we designed in the much-loved Nightingale Village. 

The project had to be delivered on a very tight budget and would be our first ever café/pantry however it was appealing to us for many reasons, not least that we are excited by new typologies.  Other appealing aspects were the challenge to deliver with speed and simplicity, the confidence in knowing and understanding our Client well, their commitment to sustainability measures, and the fact that we love the product.  But perhaps our most significant motivation to undertake this project was its potential to help energise the shared public realm of the Nightingale Village with a design contribution which continued and amplified the qualities of our building through colour, materiality and optimism.

There were several things we wanted to do - express the Japanese heritage behind IMA, make the concrete shell comfortable and welcoming and ensure flexibility and adaptability in the merchandising.   These design intentions and a need to minimise construction cost translated directly to the use of fabric and matchstick blinds instead of wall linings, intense warm colour, strategic deployment of natural timber and a double slot bracket shelving system.

IMA Pantry feels like a direct representation of its hospitality offering – friendly, simple and warm.