Liberation Coffee House

ORA hung this whole room in overlapping sheer fabric panels and won a 2023 AIA National Small Project Award for it — serious design attention spent on a cafe whose reason to exist is being somebody's first hospitality job. The cup is the quieter half: two Verve house blends, no single origins, no pour-over on the menu.

• A room worth seeing
• Working in daylight
• An affordable coffee and a biscotti
• Community events

The cafe does not roast: coffee comes from Verve Coffee Roasters in Santa Cruz, with Buena Vista on espresso and Streetlevel on drip, both house blends rather than single origins. Retail bags carry no origin, varietal, or roast date.

ORA drew the room and took an AIA Small Project Award for it: overlapping sheer fabric panels hung to wash the space in a gradient of color like a California sunset. Award architecture on a 1,600-square-foot corner cafe staffed by graduates of a three-month training program is not the usual order of things.