Twenty-nine shipping containers—each one travelled from a different port before arriving here—were stacked and angled into something that reads less like a café and more like a tree in full spread. Kengo Kuma drew from the foliage of coffee trees and the layered logic of traditional Chinese bucket arches: the result is a four-storey structure in Hualien that seems to have grown from the site rather than been built upon it. Skylights cut between the stacked volumes, drawing daylight deep into the interior. The walls inside carry murals rooted in the heritage of the Amis people, grounding the building in the place it belongs to.
