When designing New York’s new coffee shop, The Mandarin, AN Interior Top 50 firm Almost Studio sought inspiration from artistic precedents like Ellsworth Kelly’s paintings and the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks in Ohio. The result is a series of swoopy, shape-y rooms.

Up front, seating created in collaboration with Brett Paulin Design arrays patrons below a glowing soffit à la James Turrell. Behind a green stucco mass, each back-of-house space is treated as its own world, with walls faced in lacquered panels and fluted glass; the serving area is finished in metallic gold. Circles and arcs abound.

For The Mandarin’s owners, Jessica Tjeng and Bart Ackermans, the goal was to create a neighborhood hangout spot. The hospitality project is the first completed by Almost Studio, and cofounder Anthony V. Gagliardi was thankful for the chance to take risks: “We appreciated the clients’ openness to experimentation with form and material, to both create a new internal world as well as a place for the external community to gather together.”