Project Name: Laboratorium Coffee Shop

Location: Cluj-Napoca, Romania

Design Team: EktraArhitectura

Floor Area: 100 m²

Completion: 2025

Image Copyright: in-still

Interior Design: Fain Design Studio

Lead Architect: Tulogdy László

Wood Restoration: Unicom - Balla Csaba

Painting Restoration: Mednyánszky Zsolt, Mednyánszky Anna-Mária, Csüdöm Eszter, Szőcs János, Szántó Tamás

Stainless Steel Objects Manufacturer: Borodi Design

Design Features: EktraArhitectura has completed Laboratorium Coffee Shop in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, transforming a late 19th-century pharmacy into a contemporary coffee space. The project occupies the ground floor of Palatul Széki, a corner building in the heart of the city and the former home of Matia Corvin Pharmacy, once part of an important threshold into the historic centre.

Palatul Széki was designed in 1893 by Pecz Samu, an architect known for Budapest’s Central Market Hall and for public buildings with Gothic Revival influences. The building was originally commissioned for Miklós Széki, a pharmacist, academic and entrepreneur, who lived in the apartment directly above the pharmacy and connected the two levels with a private metal spiral staircase. As a result, Laboratorium is not a generic commercial interior, but a space layered with urban history, pharmaceutical memory and traces of private life.

The central question of the project was how to introduce a contemporary coffee shop into an interior with strong material presence and historical value, without weakening the identity of the existing space. EktraArhitectura’s response was to treat restoration not as preparation for design, but as the primary design act. Original solid wood furniture, Gothic arched cabinet doors, decorative fleurons, stained glass inserts, drawers labelled with medicinal plants, interior columns and historic joinery were retained and restored. Decorative paintings on the walls and vaults were also recovered from the original surface layers, bringing back the space’s earlier chromatic depth.

The new coffee programme was inserted by Fain Design Studio through contrast rather than imitation. In the main room, two coffee bars are formed as curved brushed stainless steel work surfaces, reading almost as sculptural objects while reflecting the light entering through the ogival arched windows. Metal counters, contemporary fixtures and modular seating are carefully placed among the restored woodwork. They do not attempt to copy the historic language; instead, their clear material difference allows the old and the new to remain legible.

The secondary seating area occupies the former laboratory room, where tall skylights and a vaulted ceiling have been preserved. The restored painted layer re-establishes the original colour register of the vault, while opaline red lighting fixtures introduce a theatrical quality to the interior. Dark timber cabinets, arched openings, stained glass, stainless steel counters and soft lighting together create a distinctive atmosphere: the space retains the precision and mystery of an old pharmacy while responding to the contemporary rituals of coffee, gathering and observation.

From a travel perspective, Laboratorium Coffee Shop is a meaningful stop within a walking route through central Cluj-Napoca. Rather than relying on exaggerated forms or a purely photogenic interior, it compresses urban history, pharmacy furniture, restoration craft and contemporary coffee culture into a 100-square-metre space. Visitors can spend the time of a coffee observing the cabinet labels, carved timber details, arched window light and stainless steel bars, while using the interior as a way to read the layered historical fabric of Cluj-Napoca, one of Transylvania’s most important cities.

Ultimately, Laboratorium Coffee Shop neither freezes its historical setting as a museum nor erases it in the name of commercial renewal. Through precise restoration, restrained contemporary insertions and a programme that supports everyday use, the project brings a century-old pharmacy back into the life of the city. For design observers, it offers a clear example of heritage conservation and contemporary intervention; for travellers, it is a place that can be entered, inhabited and slowly read through its details.

Design Team: EktraArhitectura is an architecture practice based in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, founded in 2017 and led by architect Tulogdy László. In Laboratorium Coffee Shop, the practice coordinated the architectural and restoration strategy, bringing together historic joinery, decorative painting, interior design and a contemporary coffee programme within one coherent spatial approach.

The interior design was completed by Fain Design Studio, while wood restoration was carried out by Unicom - Balla Csaba. Painting restoration was undertaken by Mednyánszky Zsolt, Mednyánszky Anna-Mária, Csüdöm Eszter, Szőcs János and Szántó Tamás. The stainless steel bars and related objects were manufactured by Borodi Design. This collaboration makes the project more than a coffee shop renovation: it is a design practice that combines heritage conservation, adaptive reuse and the activation of urban commercial life.