Matheus Farah e Manoel Maia Arquitetura Earn a Best of Year Award for São Paulo Chocolate Shop
2021 Best of Year winner for Counter Service
Its nearly 200,000 Instagram followers is one indication that Dengo is a maker of world-changing chocolate, or, for those fluent in Portuguese, Chocolate com sabor de mudar o mundo, the Brazilian company’s slogan. Its cocoa comes from trees in sustainably managed agro forests, and the Bahia farmers from which the beans are acquired are fairly paid. Matheus Farah e Manoel Maia Arquitetura was equally conscientious in its design of Dengo’s first freestanding site, a 16,000-square-foot, four-story concept store that also happens to be the country’s tallest wooden building. And that wood is engineered CLT, which is prefabricated, thermally efficient, and easy to install, reducing project costs, duration, and waste.
Native peroba do campo composes the table bases, casegoods, and bar face in the Meu Dengo station, where customers can customize ingredients. Also noteworthy is the flooring. Called caquinhos, or little pieces, it consists of re-constituted shards of broken red ceramic. It was a popular style in 1940’s and ’50’s São Paulo homes but also nods to Dengo’s best-selling product: Quebra-Quebra, big bars of chocolate that can be broken into many pieces for sharing—sweet and affectionate, which just happens to be the Bahia translation of dengo.
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Awards
Best of Year Awards 2021
Interior Design celebrates design in all its forms with the 2021 Best of Year Awards. See the winner’s gallery here.
Projects
Studio BANAA Deconstructs the Cocoa Bean for a San Francisco Chocolate Shop
Though chocolate in its polished form often steals the limelight, the humble cocoa bean is having a moment at the recently opened Kokak Chocolate Shop in the Castro District of San Francisco. Designed by the team at …