06.01.2023 Factory Refurb: Rave Coffee’s striking new headquarters and cafe now open for business

We have just completed an eye-catching refurbishment of a long-abandoned but rather interesting factory for Rave Coffee in Cirencester. The building, which is now Rave’s new headquarters, was probably designed by Anthony Hunt Structural Engineers in the 1960’s. It has many features reminiscent of James Stirling’s History Faculty building in Cambridge, not least a brightly coloured steel frame, single glazed patent glazing and a large circular window.

The new design retains all these features, albeit replacing the single glazing with double glazed units and factory finishing the external aluminium bars. We also changed the steel frame from bright red to bright yellow, with an overall colour scheme of bright yellow, dark grey and white to reflect the company’s bold branding.

Open designs reflect Rave’s ethos

We converted part of the ground floor into a café, an integral part of the Rave organisation, with offices up on the first floor. An essential element of the company ethos is transparency and the patent glazing overlooking the street was the initial draw to the building for this reason. Internal glazed screens between the ground floor café and first floor office areas with the production areas reinforce this ethos.

The business imports coffee beans from around the world and has already installed two large American stainless steel coffee roasters at the front of the production area. The processed beans are then packaged and posted to online customers.

Practical building upgrades

The refurbishment also included thermal insulation to external walls and roofs, replacing roof coverings, refinishing external cladding and render, diamond grinding the ground floor slab to create a working floor finish, complete renewal of services and internal finishes with internal fittings designed by the in-house marketing department. Photo-voltaic solar panels will be installed on the roof in the next phase of work.