In Sittard, the Netherlands, design studio Maurice Mentjens plays up the hallucinatory references in two connected interiors for retail shop and cafe Skunk and Relax.
If your impressions of Dutch culture are of laissez-faire social attitudes and superior design, then the new Skunk and Relax coffee shop in Sittard, confirms both. Maurice Mentjens designed these two playful interiors – for a cafe and a shop – which also sells “soft drugs” to grown-ups of Dutch residence (foreigners are not allowed to partake).
Yet the coffeehouse is enticing for its interior design, which distinguishes one space from the other. For Skunk, Mentjens and his team lined all the reflective walls with green stripes – an allusion to cannabis plants – and installed noise-baffling cylinders in a grid pattern on the ceiling. They clad Relax in an ivy wall punctured by 120-centimeter-diameter sconces by Dutch company Grease Lighting. The ceiling is animated by matching skylights, evoking many moons in one small room.
The passageway between the two spaces is also lined in mirrored surfaces sporting multi-hued green stripes. “It’s as if you are surrounded by a fairytale glade of abstract cannabis stalks,” Mentjens says in the official press release. In both spaces, sober oak furnishings by Alexander Pelikan anchor the whimsy.