Mathieu Lehanneur designs the Café ArtScience, Boston. A new concept to host scientific, intellectual and artistic discussions

Strategically positioned between the prestigious Harvard and MIT universities, Café ArtScience, Boston designed by Mathieu Lehanneur opens its doors. Over 1000 m2 to host scientific, intellectual and artistic discussions, Café ArtScience is an hybrid and multi-purpose venue that represents a new equation: Restaurant + Auditorium + Bar + Concept Shop  + Art Gallery = Ideas!

Café ArtScience is the missing link between scientific laboratory and literary café, already appealing to scholars, artists, students and investors gathered around the same dishes, to hash out tomorrow’s world.

«The greatest innovations and discoveries have rarely taken shape behind a desk. Archimedes was in his bath, Newton beneath an apple tree and Steve Jobs in a garage. Café ArtScience would have put these three great minds on the same sofa!» Lehanneur laughs.

A new venture between the french designer and the american scientist and Harvard professor, David Edwards, Café ArtScience drives the best possible tool to formulate ideas: from meeting to collaboration, from intuition to project, from brainstorming to business plan, and from the gallery to the shop…

From dawn to dusk, this venue is on the way to becoming the essential hub for Boston’s clever minds. The bar designed like an undulating veil of white cement, serves breakfast as well as experimental cocktails from noon to evening. The tables are used for professional meetings as well as to sample gourmet menus. The sofa, a huge ribbon of green velvet, is a synonym for comfort and encounters.

In line with his signature style, Mathieu Lehanneur structures the interior design without walls or partitions, but through fit-to-live-objects that demarcate the flow and imply functions. The black and enigmatic Honeycomb, is an auditorium stamped with the hexagonal and recurring motif of the venue. The hexagon, geometrically symbolising the collective intelligence of bees, is reflected here in the slate tiles used for leaving comments or announcing the forthcoming programme. Like an oasis in the middle of the space, Honeycomb accommodates conferences, creative workshops and a VIP room for private dinners…

«Our brain has as much need for intellectual stimulation as pleasure. It was time to unite these two hemispheres and to develop them in tandem» explains Mathieu Lehanneur who is undertaking a new chapter in the continuity of his quest for new ergonomic designs for objects and venues, for our contemporary requirements.

Café ArtScience
640 East Kendall Street, Cambridge, Massachussetts

Information & images by courtesy of Mathieu Lehanneur

Photos: © Phase One Photography