At La Marzocco , my flat white arrived from something that looked, at first, like a very elegant beer tap. The espresso machine itself was nowhere to be seen, hidden below the counter as part of Modbar, La Marzocco’s under-bench system. It is a neat trick: the theatre of coffee reduced to a few precise gestures, with the bulky machinery doing its work out of sight.
That ethos of performance with restraint runs through the whole space. Walking around the new Botany headquarters, designed by , you quickly sense that this is not a trying to behave like a showroom. It is part workshop, part training ground, part events space and part clubhouse for people who think very seriously about coffee.
Located inside an industrial , La Marzocco Sydney begins with a strong already in place: brickwork, steel, scale, exposed junctions and all the practical bluntness of a working shed. For architect , director of Open Creative Studio, the existing character was not something to smooth over. It was the project’s best asset.
“La Marzocco began as a small Florentine workshop in 1927,” says Moore. “Even though the company is now widely regarded as the world’s leading espresso machine manufacturer, the culture around the machines still feels closer to a than a traditional showroom.” That idea shaped the 786-square-metre space, which brings together showroom, office, training and servicing functions within a carefully adapted industrial building.
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Moore has worked with La Marzocco since 2014, beginning with the brand’s dedicated showroom in Abbotsford, . Over that time, he has come to understand the company as one built around craftsmanship, engineering and a very particular place in Australian coffee culture. For Sydney, the ambition was to create a space with the same care and design quality as La Marzocco’s international projects, while keeping hold of the , workshop-like atmosphere that has always been part of the brand’s identity.
This was La Marzocco Australia’s most ambitious local project to date, and there were moments when a more polished, fully built-out interior may have seemed tempting. Instead, Open Creative Studio argued for keeping the brickwork visible, preserving the junctions between roof structure and wall and allowing the warehouse to remain legible.
The architecture is designed as a “calm framework” for the machines. That phrase matters, because La Marzocco’s machines are already powerful objects: technical, shiny, weighty and often emotionally charged for the people who use them. The commercial machines, in particular, are the brand’s legacy products, the equipment through which many baristas and café owners first encounter La Marzocco.
“The machines are the hero” became a guiding line throughout the process and, for Moore, that meant stepping back. The architecture had to hold the experience together, but not compete or overshadow the product. Benchtops, joinery and surfaces were kept muted and hardwearing. Materials were chosen less for decorative impact than for how they would perform under constant use, movement, training and coffee grounds.
Even colour became practical. Lighter surfaces may have looked crisp on opening day, but they would have shown every spill and grind. The dark tones of the counters sit close to the colour of coffee itself, allowing the inevitable traces of daily work to recede.
Certainly, flexibility is one of the project’s real strengths. La Marzocco Sydney has to move between showroom, training room, demonstration space, hospitality setting and events venue. A customer might come in to talk through a home machine, a café owner might be there to test commercial equipment, technicians may need to access services and later the same space might host a product launch or industry event.
To support that, the commercial machines sit on rolling benches that can be moved through the showroom. Circular openings in the benches allow three-phase power, water and waste connections to be connected and disconnected with relative ease, so layouts can shift quickly depending on the use. Large counters operate as display platforms during normal operation and service counters during events.
The rolling benches became a design project in their own right. They needed to carry heavy machines, accommodate water and power, allow for waste discharge and still feel visually calm. They are furniture, but they are also mobile infrastructure — part of the spatial choreography that lets the showroom become something else with minimal fuss.
The Modbar area is a good example. Because the system conceals much of the machinery below the bench, the Sydney showroom needed to show not only the clean customer-facing side, but the servicing logic beneath. Sliding perforated panels allow the under-bench mechanisms, connections and service requirements to be understood by café owners, technicians and designers considering the system for their own projects.
Another key constraint came from the lease. When La Marzocco eventually leaves the building, the warehouse must be returned to its original condition. Every intervention had to be removable, and nothing could be fixed in a way that would make future disassembly difficult. At first, that might sound restrictive. In practice, it made the project better. The lease condition reinforced the lightness of the design approach and sharpened the question behind almost every decision: does this need to be built at all?
That same mindset shaped the sustainability strategy, emphasising reduction and reuse. “If something did not need to be built, we chose not to build it,” Moore notes. The design relies primarily on paint, joinery and epoxy flooring rather than major structural changes, with materials selected according to circular economy principles where possible.
Porta timber panels and reclaimed timber were used in the services cupboard, Laminex Truescale appears across the joinery and lighting was developed with Light Project using efficient LED fixtures that supplement the warehouse’s natural light. Above the building, a 30-kilowatt solar array produces enough energy to cover its electricity use.
There is a satisfying anecdote in all this. The landlord, initially concerned that the warehouse would need to be returned exactly as found, came to the opening and reportedly suggested the fitout might be worth leaving as it is. That is perhaps the clearest sign that the design has done what it set out to do. It is specific enough to belong to La Marzocco, but not so overdetermined that the building loses its future.
The project also carries a certain international weight for the brand. When senior representatives from La Marzocco’s Florence headquarters visited, they described the Sydney showroom as the only project globally, aside from the company’s Accademia in Florence, to reach the level of detail they aspire to across their venues.
Still, what makes the space compelling is not just that endorsement. It is the way the showroom understands coffee in an Australian context. La Marzocco machines are deeply familiar here, yet often oddly invisible. Once someone points them out, you start seeing them everywhere: in neighbourhood cafés, restaurants, bakeries, hotel lobbies, or tiny espresso bars. They are part of the background machinery of daily life.
In the end, the best thing about the space might be that it doesn’t try too hard to impress you. It gives you a coffee, shows you how things work and trusts that the rest will follow.
Open Creative Studio
Photography
Alex McIntyre Photography
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