La Mantequería
About
La Mantequería is an Argentine bakery built on the butter medialuna, with locations across Argentina, the United States and Uruguay. DOONT Studio developed the interior architecture for its franchise network, working from a 430–540 sq ft (40–50 m²) prototype in Nordelta area, Buenos Aires, where the entire room is organised around one continuous counter.
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The business is the box of a dozen, not the coffee. That is what the room is organised around. Rather than lay out a café, the project resolves the whole operation in a single line: coffee, display and register occupy one continuous counter, so that a customer reads the sequence from the door and never has to ask where to order or where to collect. Two lit hanging signs, Caja and Pick up, confirm it.
The glass display sits at eye level, product on trays, and the palette is held almost monochrome around it — sand-coloured textured render on the walls, large-format travertine-look porcelain on the floor, a dark fluted lacquer front on the counter with a travertine-look top. The only colour in the room is the pastry, and the only sharp light falls on it.
Behind the counter, a dark shelving wall carries copper milk cans and two LED screens. The milk can is where the brand's name comes from, and it returns overhead as the glass pendants above the bar: the same object, once as memory and once as light.
Everything a customer touches is worked in natural material. A solid timber plank in incienso forms the standing bar; a beam of the same timber becomes the bench by the window; the self-service wall is natural oak from floor to ceiling; the stools are woven fibre. An olive tree in a terracotta pot marks the glazing, and a planter of ornamental grasses runs under the backlit logo.
The pieces are few and recognisable on purpose. Each opening measures its room and installs them again.
La Mantequería
Type: Bakery
Location: Tribu, Rincón de Milberg, Tigre, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Size: 195 m² / 2,099 SF
Scope: Interior Design
Interior Design: DOONT Studio
