New Foyles café features typewriter signage and letterpress counter

The Foyles flagship is moving along London’s Charing Cross Road to the former CSM site at number 107, and is set to open its doors in the new building next month.

The store is being designed by architect Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands, with lustedgreen working on the café and gallery. Lustedgreen has previously worked on Foyles stores at Waterloo Station and Westfield Stratford City.

The redesigned building will feature eight alternating footplates and a full-height central atrium.

The café and gallery will both be around 130m2 in size and sit on the fifth floor.

There is also a 200-seat auditorium space, which will feature talks and musical performances.

Smita Shukla, associate designer at lustedgreen, says, ‘The brief for the café design was very unique, in that it should look undesigned and capture the spirit of the existing café.

‘We have kept the atmosphere relaxed, adding design elements that evoke the art of bookmaking, like the typewriter-key signage and the letter-press inspired servery counter.’

The gallery will open on 24 June with an exhibition by Turner Prize-nominee and CSM alumnus Mark Tichner, who will create a site-specific artwork for the new building.

Foyles had previously commissioned a host of graphic artists to create a comic-book history of Foyles, which is being exhibited outside the bookshop ahead of the move.