HIDDEN TREASURE

firm: studio shoo site: moscow

Gabardine curtains frame the entrance to Abu Gosh, a two-story house turned café specializing in Israeli cuisine.

walk through

With its pitched roof, the house on a tree-lined street in central Moscow wore its charm on its sleeve. But, as Studio Shoo founder Shushana Khachatrian discovered, it had a trick up its sleeve, as well, making it an ideal second location for Abu Gosh, a café serving Israeli cuisine. Its first outpost, inside a 1911 gardenpavilion that had been whitewashed, then enlivened with quirky, blue egg-patterned tile, is also by Khachatrian. “I liked itright away,” she says of the house. “The roof looked like an attic with secrets.”

Armenian-born, Khachatrian studied art before graduating with an architecture degree from the State University of Land Use Planning in Moscow, where she’s now based. A few years working inlocal firms taught her how to bridge her backgrounds, and, in 2017, she launched Studio Shoo. That art-architecture proficiency is on display at both cafés but particularly in the latest one, Abu Gosh Trubnaya. And it’s partly due again to Khachatrian specifying eye-catching tile, this time by Italian designer Elisa Passino, who won a 2020Interior DesignBest of Year Award for her Geometrie Componibili collection. For the café, Khachatrian selected Passino’s Capitello tile—a graphic compilation of rectangles capped by a dome—in a custom colorway of bubble-gum pink, periwinkle, navy, and white. The pattern mixes 1960’s Op Art dazzle and late ’80’s Memphis whimsy and set the tone for the 1,400-square-foot project’s palette and leitmotifs.

But first the structure needed repair and refreshing. “We dismantled floors and removed the stitched ceiling,” Khachatrian explains. She also incorporated the arch, which became a defining

Clockwise from opposite, top left: A pipe chandelier, a collaboration with artist Sergei Prokofiev, starts in the upstairs lounge and continues through a hole in the custom table and oak floor down to the first floor. The restroom has a custom concrete sink. Elisa Passino designed the tile in the main dining area downstairs. The Kaef armchairs are from Delo, a design studio and manufacturer in St. Petersburg, Russia. The project’s palette centered on Passino’s cement tile.

walk through

Clockwise from top: Arched doorways and display shelving echo the dome on the tile. Paint trims a cove fitted with a vintage pendant fixture. The exterior of the 1,400-square-foot café was painted.

element, one that was borrowed from the tile’s dome. Arches form the café and restroom entrances, wall-mounted and recessed storage, and, flipped on the axis, the backs of slim-legged pink chairs; they line up at blue-based communal tables in the main dining area on the ground floor.

Upstairs is an entirely different environment, both in function and feel. After traversing a low flight of steps, guests encounter a space defined by a folded ceiling plane, due to the house’s pitched roof, as well as original wooden beams and new oak flooring. They can lounge or attend lectures seated inmustard-upholstered armchairs or cherry red benches surrounding a circular communal table. Khachatrian brought the blue of downstairs up here by trimming the ceiling and painting stepped seating in various tones of the shade.

But it was also here that during construction Studio Shoo noticed a hole in the floor. “In studying the house’s history,” Khachatrian says, “we found that it had been used as a chimney.” She and her team initially considered plugging it up. “But we came up with a new implementation: a double chandelier that serves as a connection between the two levels.” She deviseda pair of chandeliers out of coiled blue pipe. One attaches to the pitched roof over the communal table. Then a cable threads through the tabletop, its clear acrylic base, and that existing hole in the floor to link to a second canopy above a table downstairs. What could have been a problem instead became a source of inspiration. That’s the secret

togood design. —Jesse Dorris

FROM FRONT ONLYBETON: CUSTOM SINK (RESTROOM). THROUGH CHRONOSFACTOR: WHITE PENDANT FIXTURE (LOUNGE). THROUGHOUT DELO: CHAIRS, TABLE BASES. ELISA PASSINO: TILE.

MAXI SLIDING PANELS, SELF BOLD CABINET. DESIGN GIUSEPPE BAVUSO