IM Café by Nula Studio Keeps Its Cool, Then Lets the Red Out.

Most of IM Café, on Calle de Gabriel Lobo in Madrid, is deliberately quiet. Then there’s the office.

Nula Studio, led by Laia Cervelló Sabaté and Miguel Fernández-Galiano, designed the space for IM Signature, the branding agency Inma Manresa founded more than 20 years ago to work across fashion, lifestyle and culture. The brief called for one room that could host exhibitions, brand activations and cultural events without talking over any of them. A café for the neighbourhood was part of the deal too.

The answer in the main space is restraint. A sprayed acoustic finish covers the walls and ceiling, and every corner is curved. Ceramic brick runs underfoot in herringbone, alongside Campaspero stone and compact limestone aggregate, all within one pale, warm range. Texture does the work that colour usually would. At the centre is a table Nula Studio designed from acrylic glass panels, held together with neodymium magnets and assembled on site. A height-adjustable pendant by Nanómetro Estudio lets the room change with whatever is on.

The red arrives quietly at first. High-gloss lacquered volumes hide the kitchen, storage and building services. Set against all that soft, matte plaster, their shine reads as a deliberate interruption.

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The office is where the restraint ends. Also used for storage and as a second workspace, it’s a monochrome volume in IM Signature’s colour. The walls, joinery, shelving, library ladder and floor are all red. Red-and-white striped tiles line the wall behind the sink, and linen curtains hang in front of the cupboards below. After the discipline next door, it’s a relief. There’s no mistaking whose space this is.

From the street, the façade reads as an almost continuous wall of large-format stone, with panels over two metres tall and the door set flush within it. When the café opens, a covered porch buffers the narrow, busy street and holds a glazed ceramic counter by artist Xavier Mañosa of Apparatu. Coffee goes out through a guillotine window that runs on a pulley and counterweight, the weight made from lead and fired clay by Volupte Studio. Further in, a large window looks onto a planted, south-facing courtyard above a cantilevered Campaspero stone bench.

The site was once Bar Deportivo, and the café gives the street back a place to meet. Nula Studio calls the project an exercise in restraint. The red office makes clear that restraint was a choice.

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[Images courtesy of Nula Studio. Photography by Asier Rua and Álvaro Tomé.]