Origin Café & Roasters by Studio DUA: An Industrial Coffee Roastery in Riyadh's JAX District
people • DESIGNERS
In the JAX District of Diriyah - Riyadh's emerging cultural quarter, where industrial warehouses have begun their second life as galleries, studios, and cafés - Studio DUA has completed Origin Café & Roasters, a project that reframes a single warehouse as something rarer: an architecture that traces the journey of a coffee bean from raw matter to ritual.
Founded and led by Abukhalaf Dua, the Riyadh-based practice approached a brief that demanded plurality - café, roastery, workspace, all under one roof - and refused the easy hierarchy of a hospitality space pinned to a back-of-house roaster. The result is one of the most considered examples of interior architecture in Saudi Arabia's expanding café and design scene.
Words: designeers
MAY 2026
WEBSITE:www.duaabukhalaf.com
INSTAGRAM: @duaabukhala.studio
The Brief: Café, Roastery, Workspace as a Single Sequence
The warehouse is laid out in a sequence. Three zones follow the linear progression of coffee itself: visitors enter at the roastery, where green beans are stored, weighed, and roasted; they pass through a central preparation and serving zone, where the bean becomes the cup; and they arrive, at the far end, in a private workspace where the experience settles into the slower register of a long table, a laptop, and time.
The decision to leave the warehouse shell largely intact gives the project its anchor. Concrete, metal, and the rough geometry of the original structure remain visible - the architect working with rather than against the building's industrial register. This is industrial warehouse conversion at its most disciplined: preservation as a starting point, not a constraint.
Origin Café & Roasters, Riyadh by Studio DUA
Material Language: Concrete, Charred Wood, Suspended Metal
Within the preserved shell, new elements arrive as deliberate, almost sculptural interventions. The most striking of these is a series of monolithic counters that run along the length of the space. Cast in place from cement with exposed aggregate, they appear to float above a series of low steps - heavy in mass, light in poise. The counters carry the project's quiet thesis about contrast: rough and smooth, mass and lightness, raw and refined.
The same material language extends into the seating area through a continuous bench, while loose furniture in deep black anchors the room without competing with it. Charred wood partitions divide the zones, introducing texture and warmth against the cool concrete and metal. The workspace, raised to its own level, is reached by concrete stairs and enclosed in metal cladding - the architectural language sustained through the most functional zone of the project.
A Roastery Made Visible
The roastery itself remains open to the café. A large industrial roasting machine sits at the front of the experience, its presence theatrical rather than hidden. A dedicated cupping counter sits beside it, and storage displays present the beans as objects worth looking at. Visitors do not simply consume coffee here; they witness it being made.
For a Riyadh coffee shop, this transparency reads as a deliberate cultural statement. The Saudi café scene has matured rapidly in recent years, and projects like Origin signal a shift from imported aesthetics towards confident local interpretation - design rooted in process, place, and the substance of the product itself.
Origin Café & Roasters
Origin Café & Roasters
Origin Café & Roasters
“The Saudi café scene has matured rapidly in recent years, and projects like Origin signal a shift from imported aesthetics towards confident local interpretation.”
DESIGNEERS
Light, Skylight, and the Movement of the Day
Above all of it, light moves. The roof has been reimagined in aluminium cladding, with a prominent skylight cut directly above the central counters. Beneath the skylight, an installation of suspended metal chains catches the changing daylight, casting shifting shadows across the concrete floor as the day moves through morning, midday, and afternoon.
Externally, the façade has been reconfigured with strategically placed openings that frame specific moments within the interior - apertures that offer passers-by glimpses into the different zones, creating a visual conversation between the project and the public realm of JAX District.
Origin Café & Roasters
Origin Café & Roasters
A Project Worth Taking Seriously
What Studio DUA has delivered is more than a hospitality fit-out. Origin Café & Roasters is a building that rewards slow looking, and a project that argues that even a coffee shop can be a piece of architecture worth taking seriously. It is a notable addition to the wider conversation around Diriyah's cultural transformation and to the broader story of contemporary interior design in Saudi Arabia.
Discover more about Dua Abukhalaf in our BlackBook.
Origin Café & Roasters
PROJECT CREDITS:
Design: Studio DUA Architect & Founder: Abukhalaf Dua
Photography captured by Aylul Studio
Location: JAX District, Diriyah, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Materials: Cement with exposed aggregate, charred wood, aluminium cladding, metal
