The circular window at the front of Trois Café might feel like a portal to the future, but it’s actually a reference to the past. Led by Nelson Chow, principal of NC Design & Architecture, the sci-fi-inflected project is modelled after a key component of Hong Kong’s urban landscape: its 1960s and ’70s public housing estates.

Trois Café balances the brutalist geometry of Hong Kong’s public housing estates with more futuristic sci-fi details.

Inspired by the colourful facades of these buildings, the café’s bold, nostalgic palette is in welcome juxtaposition to the auto dealerships and bland corporate offices that surround it in the Wan Chai District. Trois Café takes the place of an old car rental location, but you’d never know from its eye-catching transformation.

The main dining table evokes a basketball court, while the seating riffs on exercise equipment found in outdoor fitness parks.

Along with the coffee shop’s round central window, its recessed entrance and vertical louvers are further nods to the brutalist geometry of Hong Kong’s public housing. Inside, a graphic flooring pattern alludes to the large playgrounds that often accompany these apartment towers. “The lines appear to be a basketball court, with a glass-topped table in the shape of a free-throw area,” Chow explains.

Similarly, custom seating mimics the equipment at housing estate fitness parks. The main seating area’s hand-plastered walls continue the bubble gum pink of the café exterior, while a contrasting back nook carries the aqua hue of the floors up onto a ceramic-tiled bench and rear wall trellis. Several other accent walls are covered in grout-free grids of handcrafted tile, and resin cubes are also installed individually around the bar as playful details. “They’re the enlarged version of the mosaic tiles found in housing blocks,” says Chow.

Resin blocks punctuate the bar area and serve as fun display podiums for popular menu items.

While its distinctive elements required some investment, the café has quickly proven to be a massive social media hit. “As people couldn’t travel this year, the locals are always in search of new places to visit and photograph,” Chow says. Many Instagram posts later, Trois Café has become as much of a landmark as the buildings that inspired it.