The joke in 1986 when Lloyds of London was completed was that it started off in a coffee house and ended up in a percolator – a reminder that long before Costa and Starbucks, the capital was no stranger to coffee. Architecture firm TILT acknowledges this in its latest project, the Proud Archivist, designed to elegantly revive London’s coffee house culture by creating a simple, cool place in uber-cool Hackney. The 500m2 space is decked out with a long bar and double height ‘library wall’ of white-stained spruce ply, while the gallery area, which uses Forbo linoleum, has a ‘light wall’. Above, the 100-seat restaurant has impressive views over Regent’s Canal. Using a limited palette, TILT has hung untreated larch ceiling fins at 90˚ to the reclaimed mahogany floor.