https://www.woodworkingnetwork.com/design/slideshow-millwork-inspired-chocolaty-goodnessBUFFALO, N.Y. — Tasked to imagine a 780-square-foot space for Blue Table Chocolates, an artisan chocolatier in Buffalo, N.Y., Arch&Type asked how built space can enhance the crafting and consumption of chocolate. Rather than focusing on the superficial image (how chocolate appears) and painting cocoa beans on the walls, designers Seth Amman & Adam McCullough explored chocolate’s emotional and physiological impacts, and how to evoke such feelings through material and space. 

The impetus for this exploration came from client Ben Johnson, who presented an image of un-tempered crystallized chocolate: melted, silky, and flowing. Design began by extracting the feelings from both the image and Ben’s product—comfort, mystery, warmth, decadence—then transposing these into the realm of building craft.

A warm, textural atmosphere emerges through a palette of soft matte white oak balanced by subtle lime-wash paint, large aggregate concrete, mirrored metal, and gold. Brass accents along the casework and wall bases tie into the parametric river ceiling. Together, these elements coalesce into a sort of surplus-quality, augmenting one another as an experienced whole—punctuated, of course, by the sensuous act of biting into a truffle that slowly melts to reveal an equally “surplus” flavor profile.

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