Cha Company

Adaptive reuse of an old house into a cultural hub in the disguise of a cafe.

Architecture as brand!

Cha Company is a start-up that operates at the intersection of commercial-retail and culture. It aspires to create chance interactions and exchanges through curating of events in a retail atmosphere.

The site identified was a corner one with an old house which need to modified without changing the structure. To create more space we left the interiors with minimum alterations and used it for cafe while we encased the old building with an increased volume in industrial corrugated sheet to create large event spaces in the terrace and sides.

Corrugated (galvalume) sheets are ubiquitous in Kerala where they are used as a second layer of roof coverings in every house/building to mitigate the extreme down pour during monsoon and insulation for soaring heat during summer.

Use of the corrugated sheet in-turn provided the much needed brand identity through this material that is rooted in popular culture of the place.